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Effingham Maynard & Co., 

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ENGLISH SCHOOL CLASSICS. 



THE PEOLOGUE 

TO 

The Canterbury Tales 

OP 

GEOFFREY CHAUCEk! 



THE TEXT COLLATED WITH THE SEVEN OLDEST MSS., AND A UTE OF THJB 

AUTHOR, INTRODUCTORY NOTICES, GRAMMAR, CRITICAL AND 

EXPLANATORY NOTES, AND INDEX TO OBSOLETE 

AND DIFFICULT WORDS. 



E. F. WiLLOUGHBY, M.D. 




NEW YORK: 

Effingham Maynard & Co., 

SUCCESSORS TO 

Clajik & Maynard, Publishers, 
771 Broadway and 67 tSJ ^9 Ninth St. 






SG% 



A Complete Course in the Study of English. 



Spelling, Language, Grammar, Composition, Literature. 

Reed's Word Lessons — A Complete Speller. 

Reed &. Kellogg's Graded Lessons in English. 
Reed &. Kellogg's Higher Lessons in English. 
Kellogg's Text-Book on Rhetoric. 

Kellogg's Text-Book on English Literature. 



In the preparation of this series the authors have had one object 
clearly in view — to so develop the study of the English language as to 
present a complete, progressive course, from the Spelling-Book to the 
study of English Literature. The troublesome contradictions whi^h 
arise in using books arranged by different authors on these subjects, 
and which require much time for explanation in the school-room, will 
be avoided by the use of the above " Complete Course." 

Teachers are earnestly invited to examine these books. 

Effingham Maynaed & Co., Publishers, 

771 Broadway, New York. 

Gift 

hn M- Gmerm^n 



CONTENTS, 



Preface, 3 

The argument and Characters of the Prologue, . . 5 

Life of Chaucer, . . . , 11 

Essay on the Language of Chaucer, 15 

History of the English Language to the time of Chaucer, 18 

The Prologue, with Notes, .;..... 38 

Glossary, --,..,.... 103 



PREFACE. 



MXCEPT in the use of some words which have since become obsolete, 
and in the retention or partial retention of certain inflections, the 
language of Chaucer is essentially the same as our own ; and were he 
a prose writer, one might easily, all philological considerations apart, 
make him intelligible to all by simply giving a glossary of such words 
as have gone entirely out of use, and modernizing the spelling and 
inflections of those which are common. 

But Chaucer wrote with metre and rime, and all attempts to make 
him more intelligible by reducing his quaint archaic English to the 
diction of the nineteenth century, end in obliterating the rhythm, which, 
whatever views one may hold as regards metre and rime, is essential 
to all forms of poetry. Indeed the adapters of Chaucer have mostly 
gone further, and being ignorant of the grammatical value of the 
several inflections, have, by confiising different tenses, numbers, and 
even parts of speech, turned his wit to nonsense. 

The devotion with which the study of the childhood and youth of 
our mother tongue has within the last score years been taken up by a 
small band of earnest students, has not only brought to light several 
very old MSS., but has enabled us to examine them critically, because 
intelligently, and to make great progress towards the construction of 
a te.vt more correct than any single one extant. 

The only way to understand Chaucer is to learn his language, and 
the little labour given to the study will be w^ell repaid by the enjoy- 
ment ; by the discovery that his verse, instead of being the rude and 
halting doggerel which "modernized " texts present, is almost as finished 
and flowing as that of Pope, and incomparably more natural and musical. 
It reflects the childhood, the springtide of our poetry; it is full of the 
sights and sounds of the fields and woods, and of pictures of the life of 
merry England in the olden days. 

In the determination of the text I have made use of Mr. T. Wright's 
revision of the Harleian MS., and Dr. Morris' text which he has con- 
structed by collation with the six texts edited by Mr. Furnivall, and 
I have myself compared it line by line with these, adopting whichever 
reading seemed to me to give the best sense and sound, and occasionally 
giving the more important variations if they seemed of equal merit or 
probabiUty. 

But I have introduced a new feature, viz. , an attempt by the em- 
ployment of different type to indicate the correct metre and pronuncia- 



4 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

tion, so far at least as is essential to the scanning of the verse. This 
qualification is necessary, for we have few means of knowing how the 
individual vowels and consonants were sounded. We can, for example, 
generally appreciate the poetry of the Elizabethan and seventeenth 
century writers without strictly following even what we know to have 
been their own pronunciation. We must, indeed, occasionally read 
Room for Rome in Shakespeare, when he plays on the words — 

"Now it is Rome indeed and room enough." 

—Julius Ccesar, act i. so. 2, line 156 (Globe). 

and in this poem, lines 670-1, where " Rome " rimes with *' to me," and 
must plainly be pronounced like "roomy;" or " achies in one's jmtes," 
in Butler; but it is not necessary to read of " resaving services of goold 
and yallow cJdney" or of "being obleeged to poonish a marchant," 
since these peculiarities do not affect the verse. 

The signs I have employed are explained in the notice on the Versifi- 
cation. I may, however, take this opportunity of justifying an idea of 
my own with regard to Chaucer's verse, in which I fear all will not agree. 
Rime and metre were not indigenous among the Teutonic nations, but 
derived from the Romance languages, and I believe that before they were 
completely naturalized among us they were adopted with the peculi- 
arities of French poetry, and that consequently when a line ended 
with a syllable containing a silent "e" that vowel was abcays 
sounded, though not so full or decidedly as others. I mean, to take a 
simple illustration, that though the word pilgrimage occurring in the 
middle of a line had but three syllables, yet when it ended a line it 
was read as of four; not so strongly pronounced as in the plural 
'pilgrimages, but still it was pronounced. I had thought of using some 
special mark, as a single dot over the letter, but I have foregone this 
refinement, and written it, as I have other e's which I wish the reader 
to sound, thus, 6. 

For the Life of Chaucer and the Grammar of the Language in his time 
I am greatly indebted to Dr. Morris' edition of the Prologue and 
Knightes Tale in the Clarendon Press Series, from which I have alsp 
borrowed freely in the notes; but I have had recourse to every historical 
and philological authority within my reach, in the hope of rendering 
this little work as perfect and useful as I could. 

London, January, 1881. 



THE ARGUMENT. 

THE ARGUMENT AND CHARACTERS 
OF THE PROLOGUE. 



The general plan of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales seems to have been 
suggested by the Decameron of Boceaccio, which had appeared some 
thirty years before. Each is a collection of stories more or less 
romantic, drawn from the French and Provengal literature of the 
Troubadours, and the older Italian writers ; some again being trace- 
able through these to Arabian, or, though oddly metamorphosed in 
transmission, to classic sources, the whole strung together by the 
simple artifice of being supposed to be told in turn by the members 
of a company who, having no present employment, agree thus to pass 
away their time. 

But in the conception of their plots Boccaccio and Chaucer differ 
as strongly as did their individual characters or those of their respec- 
tive societies. The Italian imagines five elegant dilettanti nobles 
with a like number of accomplished and youthful ladies retiring to 
the beautiful gardens of a villa in the country in order to escape 
the dangers and to avoid the horrors of the pestilence which in 1348 
ravaged the city of Florence. 

Gay, selfish, and callous to the sufferings of their poorer fellow- 
citizens, they spend their time in a round of feasting and revelry, or 
in walking amid the enchanting scenery of the Apennines, regard- 
less of aught but their own enjoyment. Chaucer, on the conti'ary, 
was full of human sympathy, and though familiar with the lan- 
guages, literature, and society of France and Italy, intensely Eng- 
lish. Sprung from the middle class, but thrown by his varied 
avocations into contact with men and women of every rank, he had 
ample opportunities for cultivating a natural insight into character, 
he could appreciate whatever was good and true whether in 
"gentil Knight" or " poure Persoun " and his "Plowman brother," 
and had a no less keen perception of the vices, the faults, and 
the foibles of high and low. Yet his satire, though unsparing, is 
rather of the nature of kindly ridicule than stern invective ; he aims 
rather at making its objects appear ludicrous, or at the worst con- 
temptible, tlian as exciting hatred, indignation, or disgust; he laughs 
them down, and we, if not they themsol ves, enjoy the laugh. 



6 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Extremely happy is the little incident which brings together a 
motley crowd from every grade except the highest and the very 
lowest. A mere accident, but one which serves his purpose better 
than the most elaborate plot, and so probable and natural that one 
can scarcely believe it had no foundation in fact. 

One fine evening in April, while he is staying at the Tabard, an 
old inn in Southwark, a company of pilgrims assemble, for the most 
part strangers to one another, with no other common purpose than 
that of mutual protection from the perils of the road, in their 
journey to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. At 
supper their host, a jolly and sociable fellow, offers to accompany 
them as their guide, having, he says, often conducted such parties in 
that capacity ; and at the same time proposes that in order to enliven 
the tedium of the journey each shall tell a couple of tales on the 
way thither and the same number on their return. This advice is 
promptly agreed to, the order in which they shall speak determined 
by drawing lots, and the poet, anticipating much enjoyment from 
the study of characters so various and under circumstances so free 
from restraint, resolves on joining the party himself, and on writing 
an account of what he should see and hear. 

The several personages are described with consummate skill. In 
a few lines we are made acquainted with their features and dress, 
their manners and characters ; they stand out before us in strong 
individuality, not like portraits in a picture-gallery, but as men 
and women living, acting, talking with us. Though Chaucer 
never wrote a drama in the common acceptation of the word, 
he evinces in this Prologue the possession of dramatic powers of 
the highest order. He never aims at effect by contrast or 
exaggeration, the most trivial features are consistent with the rest ; 
an under-current of fun pervades the whole, and the most telling 
hits often appear as by or after thoughts, adding greatly to their 
force. 

First, we have the " verray perfight gentil Knight," a repre- 
sentative of the old chivalry, then fast passing away, a veteran 
warrior, but " of his port as meke as is a mayde," in short, the ideal 
knight sans peur et sans reproche. 

His son, a young " Squyer," as gay as he was brave, more accom- 
plished than his father in the arts of peace, but having already 
proved his prowess in the last French war, was followed by a single 
attendant, an honest and trusty " yeman " from among his father's 
tenantry. 



CHARACTERS OF THE PROLOGUE. 7 

Next comes the Lady Prioresse, who makes no pretensions to 
religious austerity, but on the contrary, she 

" Peynede hire to countrefete chere 
Of court, and ben estatlich of manere." 

A woman of fashion, her heart still clings to the world, she lavishes 
her affections on her lap-dogs, unmindful of the sick and poor, and 
her very brooch bears the significant motto of gallantry, "Amor 
vincit omnia." In her suite are a nun and three priests. 

Then we meet a type of which we still have a representative in 
the fox-hunting country parson, a Monk proud of his horsemanship 
and his hounds, richly attired and fond of good living rather than 
of study, certain, as Chaucer slyly hints, of early promotion to an 
abbacy, just one of those luxurious idle monks who roused the 
indignant denunciations of Wycliff. 

After him comes a Friar, who under the cloke of mendicancy 
covers a deep-rooted love of money and selfish indulgence, being 
"the bestg beggere in his hous," who "knew the tavernes wel in 
every toun," and by his power of confession and absolution exerted 
unbounded influence over women old and young. Scarcely less 
odious and more contemptible is the hypocritical Pardoner or 
seller of indulgences, one of the class whose bare-faced impostures 
first aroused the spirits of Luther and the German reformers. His 
wallet is "bretful of pardouns come from Kome al hoot," and he has 
an inexhaustible stock of reliques and bones, which the poet insinu- 
ates are those of pigs, not saints. 

His especial friend and companion is a Sompnour or Summoner, 
an officer of the ecclesiastical courts, a low ignorant and dissolute 
bully, who holds a terrible power over "the yonge gurles of his 
diocese " in spite of his repulsive appearance and character. 

Chaucer was not at heart an irreligious man, and waged no war 
with the clergy as ministers of religion, but he was a Protestant 
in the sense that he wished to expose the vices, the hypocrisy, and 
the worldliness of the ecclesiastical orders, universally abandoned 
as they were to corruption and venality. These, from which the 
prelates were in general selected, were recruited from the higher 
ranks of society; the secular clergy, on the contrary, for the most 
part drawn from the humbler classes, were often men of deep and 
earnest piety, and, thanks to the foundations at the universities, of 
far greater learning than the former. Connected by ties of blood and 
sympathy with the poor among whom they laboured, and than 



O THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

whom they were too often little richer, they used the influence 
which their spiritual character gave them in their behalf; and to 
their ministrations at the death-beds of the proud nobles we owe 
more than to anything else the gradual emancipation of the English 
peasantry from a state of absolute serfdom. 

Chaucer was far too generous to ignore such goodness, and he has 
left us in the character of the "poure Persoun of a tomi" a picture 
of simple, unselfish piety, such as has never been surpassed. Poor in 
this world's goods, "but riche of holy thought and werk," brother 
to a plowman, but " a lerned man, a clerk " {i.e., a university 
man), " that Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche ; " liberal to the 
poor, though poor himself ; self-denying and contented with his 
lot, he did not seek preferment, but endeavoured by gentleness and 
sympathy, by well-judged remonstrance, and above all by his own 
good example, "to drawe folk to heven," his character is beautifully 
summed up in the last couplet, 

" But Cristas lore, and his apostles twelv6 
He taughte, but first he folwede it hiniselv6." 

To the same class we must refer the "Clerk of Oxenford," though 
as yet he had not got a benefice. He lived apai't from the world, 
spending his little money on books, a poor but earnest scholar, grave 
and thoughtful in speech. 

After the clergy the other learned professions are represented by 
one member of each. The " Doctour of Phisik " is a capital sketch 
of the physician of the day. A learned ostentatious charlatan, 
deeply versed in astrology, magic, and all the useless lore of the 
dark ages, though 

" His studie was but litel on the Bibel. " 

Gorgeously attired to command respect, temperate in his habits, and 
not wanting in worldly wisdom, for " ful redy hadde he his apote- 
caries," and "ech of hem made other for to wynne;" a practice 
which is not quite extinct in our own time, though repudiated by 
every honourable practitioner. 

The "Sergeant of Lawe" is a clever and favourable picture of the 
shrewd and successful pleader, with every statute and precedent by 
rote, and possessing that element of success, the art of appearing 
even busier and wiser than he really was. With him there was a 
wealthy Frankleyn or country gentleman, the prototype of the 
port-wine-loving squire of a bygone generation, at whose ample and 



CHARACTERS OP THE PROLOatTE. d 

hospitable board the lawyer liad often sat when associated in the 
work of the sessions. He was a county magistrate, and had sat in 
parliament as knight of his shire. 

Turning now to the middle classes we meet a " Marchaunt," 
acute in his dealings, and if not always prosperous, able to impress 
others with the belief that he is so. He can speak of little else 
than his business, but is cautious not to say too much. Four well- 
to-do Burgesses, whose (Jress bespeaks their wealth, and members 
of their respective guilds, at a time when the city companies were 
really haberdashers, weavers, &c., as indicated by their names. 
Like the traditional alderman, they are fond of good living, and 
bring with them a professed cook. 

The gentle upright " Maunciple," ever mindful of his employer's 
interests; the not less able but utterly unscrupulous "Reeve" or 
Bailiff, an " unjust steward," overbearing to his inferiors but serving 
his master efficiently, though from motives purely selfish, and abusing 
the confidence which his ability earned him for the purpose of 
lining his own nest ; the coarse, vulgar, and brutal " Mellere ; " and 
the humble " Plowman," who in his narrower field exhibits the 
same simple Christian life and example of charity as his clerical 
brother; with the "Schipman" and the "Wyf of Bathe," complete 
the motley company. 

"The Schipman" is a genuine sailor, brave, hardy, and master of 
his craft, more in his element in a storm in the Bay of Biscay than 
on a horse. Not troubled with an over-nice conscience, he was 
ready to combine the character of a freebooter with that of trader, 
not unlike the Raleighs and other privateer captains of a later age. 

The " Wyf of Bathe" is, besides the "Lady Prioresse," and her 
attendant nun, of whom, however, we haVe no description — the only 
female personage in the company. It seems strange that Chaucer, 
who elsewhere shows his high estimation of womanly virtue, and 
especially of good wives, should not have given some other female 
characters, corresponding, for example, to the Manciple or the 
Frankleyn. If not a caricature, and there is no reason to suppose 
her to be such, she presents a dark picture of the morality of women 
of her class. A well-to-do cloth -worker from the west of England, 
trading on her own account, she belongs to the same grade of 
society as the group of city liverymen. Violent in temper, bold 
and wanton in dress and manners, loud, coarse, and loose in her 
language, and as loose in her morals, she is a living satire on the mere 
conventional observance of the externals of religion, having visited 



10 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Rome and the Holy Sepulchre, as well as the chief shrines of the 
Continent, and being regular in her attendance at the church in the 
superstitious rites of Relic Sunday, on which occasion she often 
gave way to her proud and overbearing disposition. 

Such are the dramatis personce of this matchless Prologue, which 
in less than nine hundred lines brings before our eyes nearly the 
whole of English society in the fourteenth century more vividly 
than the most laborious history. 

The tales which follow reflect the minds of the narrators, but 
that part of the work Chaucer did not live to complete. The Pro- 
logue is, however, the most valuable as the most original portion, 
and from the light it throws on the manners and thoughts of our 
countrymen of that generation, deserves the most careful study. 



Liril OF CHAUCER. 11 

LIFE %F CHAUCER 



The father and grandfather of Geoffrey Chaucer were well-to-do 
citizens and vintners of the city of London. The guilds and city 
companies were at that time what their names imply, associations of 
men engaged in the same trade or industry, and, accordingly, we find 
John Chaucer, the father of the poet, keeping a wine-shop and 
hostelrie on the banks of the Thames, near the outfall of the Wall 
Brook, probably where the Cannon Street Station now stands, and 
here Geoffrey was bom and spent his early years. 

What education he gave his son, and whether he intended him 
for the professions of the law or the church, or for the less ambitious 
career of a citizen, we do not know. 

The author of the " Court of Love " represents himself as " of 
Cambridge, clerk;" but even if this could be proved to mean that 
he was a student of that university, there are very strong grounds 
for believing that the poem has been wrongly attributed to Chaucer. 
There is, in fact, not a shadow of evidence that Chaucer studied at 
either Oxford or Cambridge, though Leland asserts that he had been 
at each. 

Young men designed for secular callings frequently finished their 
education by attaching themselves to the households or retinue of 
some nobleman, with whom they enjoyed the advantages of intro- 
duction to good society, and sometimes of foreign travel on political 
or military enterprises. 

John Chaucer attended Edward III. and his Queen Philippa in 
1338 in their expedition to Flanders, but in what capacity we have 
no means of learning. In 1357 we find a Geoffrey Chaucer in the 
household of Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, third son of Edward, and if 
he were our poet he doubtless owed his appointment to his father's 
former connection with the court. In 1359 he served, still pro- 
bably in attendance on Lionel, with the army of Edward in France, 
and was, as he himself informs us, taken prisoner, but ransomed in 
the following year at the ignominious peace of Bretigny. 

In 1367 and the following years we find entries in the Issue Rolls 
of the Court of Exchequer and in the Tower RoUs of the payment 
to him of a pension of twenty marks for former and present services 



12 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

as one of the valets of the king's chamber. While in attendance on 
the members of the royal family he had formed an unreturned and 
hopeless attachment to some lady of far higher social rank, which 
inspired his first original poem, the "Compleynt to Pite;" and since, 
in his elegy on the death of Blanche, the young wife of John of 
Gaunt, entitled " The Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse," he con- 
fesses that the "sickeness" that he "had suffred this eight yeere" 
is now past, there can be little doubt that she was the object of his 
affection. 

From 1370 to 1380 he was engaged in not less than seven diplo 
matic missions to Italy, France, and Flanders, for which he received 
various sums of money, as well as a valuable appointment in the 
customs; in 1374 he obtained the lease of the house above the 
Aldgate from the corporation of London, and in this year the 
Duke of Lancaster granted him a pension of £10 for services ren- 
dered by himself and his wife Philippa. We hear of a Philipp? 
Chaucer as one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber to the Queen 
Philippa as early as 1366 ; but since in the "Compleynte to Pite " in 
1367 he expresses a hope that his high-born lady love may yet 
accept his love, it is probable that she was a namesake or cousin of 
Geoffrey, and that he did not marry her until the nuptials of the 
Lady Blanche with the duke had extinguished his hopes of ever 
making her his wife, perhaps, indeed, not until after her death. 

In 1372-73 he remained in Italy for nearly a year on the king's 
business, where, if he did not make the acquaintance of Petrarch 
and Boccaccio, as is supposed by some, it is certain that the study of 
the Italian poetry and literature exerted a marked influence on his 
own writings, as seen in the works composed during this middle 
period of his literary career, the " Lyfe of Seynte Cecile," " Parla- 
ment of Foules," "Compleynt of Mars," "Anelide and Arcite," 
"Boece," "Former Age," "Troylus and Cresseide," and the 
" House of Fame." 

At a later period he wrote his "Truth," "Legende of Good 
Women," his " Moder of God," and began the " Canterbury 
Tales." 

In 1386 he was elected a knight of the shire for the county of 
Kent, and in this year we obtain the only authentic evidence of his 
age. In a deposition made by him at Westminster, where the 
parliament was met, in the famous trial between Richard, Lord 
Scrope, and Sir Kobert Grosvenor, the council clerk entered him, 
doubtless on his own statement, as forty years old and upwards, 



LIFE OF CHAUCER. 13 

and as having borne arms for twenty-seven years. We may there- 
fore conchide that he was born in 1339, which would make him at 
that time forty-seven years old, and the twenty-seven years would 
count from his coming of age. He would thus have been eighteen 
when he became page to the Princess Elizabeth, and twenty in the 
French war. 

His patron, John of Gaunt, was now abroad, and John's rival, the 
Duke of Gloucester, in power. The commission appointed by the 
parliament to inquire into the administration of the customs and 
subsidies, dismissed him from his two appointments in the customs, 
and soon after even his pensions were revoked. He was thus 
reduced from affluence to poverty, and his feelings are expressed in 
his beautiful " Balade of Truth ; " to add to his troubles his wife 
died next year (1389), yet amid grief and penury he went on with his 
merry "Canterbury Tales." 

With the reassumption of the government by Richard II. in 1389 
and the return of the Lancastrian party to power, fortune smiled 
once more on the poor poet, but his income was at best small and 
uncertain, and his tenure of some petty offices short and precarious. 
He wrote about this time his translation of a "Treatise on the 
Astrolabe, for his son Lewis," his " Compleynt of Venus," 
"Envoy to Skogan," "Marriage," "Gentleness," "Lack of Stead- 
fastness," "Fortune and his Compleynt to his Purse," besides 
carrying on his greatest work, the " Tales," which was left unfinished 
at his death. This event occurred in 1400 at a house in the garden 
of the Chapel of St. Mary, Westminster, the lease of which he had 
taken in the previoi;s year. 

He was probably in his sixty -first or sixty-second year when he 
died. 

In the carefully executed portrait by Occleve, preserved among 
the Harl. MSS., and the words which he puts into the mouth of 
" mine host " of the Tabard, as well as from admissions no less than 
deliberate expressions of feeling scattered through his works, we can 
form a pretty complete notion of his personal appearance, habits, 
and character. 

Stout in body but small and fair of face, shy and reserved with 
strangers, but fond — perhaps too fond — of "good felaweschip,"of wine 
and song ; passionately given to study, often after his day's labours 
at the customs sitting up half the night poring over old musty 
MSS., French, Latin, Italian, or English, till his head ached, and 
his eyes were dull and dazed. But his love of nature was as strong 



14 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

as his love of books. He is fond of dwelling on the beauties of the 
Bpring-time in the country. 

" Herkneth these blisful bridd6s how they synge, 
And seth the fresschg flour6s how they springe I " 

he bids us on a bright April morn. And more fully describes his 
own feelings in the " Legend of Good Women." 

" And as for me, though that I konne but lyte. 
On bok6s for to rede I me delyte. 
And to hem give I feyth and ful credence. 
And in myn herte have hem in reverencg 
So herteiy that there is gam6 noon 
That fro my bok6s maketli me to goon. 
But i't be seldom on the holy day, 
Save certeynly whan that the monethe of May 
Is comen, and that I here the foul6s synge. 
And that the flourgs gynnen for to sprynge. 
Fa-ire wel my boke, and my devocioun ! " 

He was thoroughly English, one of the educated middle class, the 
class to which England owes so much; he had by his connection 
with court acquired the refinement and culture of the best French 
and Italian society, without rising above or severing himself from 
the people to whom he belonged. He could appreciate genuine 
worth in squire or ploughman, purity and courtesy whether in knight 
or in the poor country parson. All were his fellowmen, and he 
sympathized with all. He had known every change of fortune, of 
wealth and want, and his poetry often reflects his state for the time 
being ; but even in his old age, when poor, infirm, and alone, ^ ' 
irrepressible buoyancy of spirts did not desert him. 

Freshness and simplicity of style, roguish humour, quaint fun, 
hearty praise of what is good and true, kindly ridicule of weaknef^ 
and foibles, and earnest denunciation of injustice and oppressiori, ■ 
among his most marked characteristics. 



ESSAY ON TUE LANGUAGE. 15 



ESSAY ON THE LANGUAGE OF CHAUCER. 



The age of Chaucer marks an epoch in the history of our language, 
when what is called the New English arose from the complete 
fusion of the Norman French with the speech of the common 
people. 

So long as our kings retained their continental possessions, and 
our nobles ruled England as a conquered country, looking to 
Normandy, Picardy, and Anjou as their fatherland, whence they 
continually recruited their numbers, the union of the races was 
impossible; but with the final loss of Normandy by King John in 
120-i the relations of the two countries were changed, and in the, 
rei^ of Edward I. and Edward III. the Norman barons were 
compelled by circumstances to consider this their home, and France 
a land to be reconquered by the arms of their English fellow- 
citizens and subjects. The change of sentiment required, however, 
time for its completion. For two or three generations the nobles felt 
themselves a superior race and clung to their own language, dis- 
daining to adopt one which they had been accustomed to look on 
a>i fit only for " villans and burghers." Though they could not 

\ain from intercourse with the common people, the separation of 
language persisted, and served to mark the man of rank from the 
'^lebeian. 

In the metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, which from 

-'rnal evidence must have been written later than a.d. 1280, and 
ferred by Mr. K. Oliphant to about a.d. 1300, it is plainly 

^erted, that to speak French was in his time considered a mark of 

.d breeding: 

■*' Vor bote a man couthe French me tolth of liym wel lute, 
Ac lowe men holdeth to Eiigliss, and to her owe speche yute; 
Ich wene tlier ne be man in world contreyes none 
That ne holdeth to her kunde speche bote Engelond one ; 
Ac wel me wot vor to conne bothe wel yt ys, 
Vor the more that a man can the more worthe he is." 

[For unless a man know French one thinks but little of him. 
But low men hold to English, and to their own speech well ; 



16 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

I believe there are no men in the countries of the world 
That do not hold to their native speech but England only ; 
But well I know that it is well to understand both. 
For the more that a man knows the more worth (able) he is.] 

The blending of the languages began with the fourteenth century. 
The ballads of Lawrence Minot, composed probably at intervals 
between 1330 and 1360, and the " Vision of Piers Plowman," which 
seems to have been written soon after 1365, contain an infusion of 
French words; but the effects of the complete coalescence of the 
two peoples, and the impulse it gave to the development of the 
common language, are to be seen in the poems of Gower and his 
friend Chaucer, which belong to the latter part of the fourteenth 
century. The translation of the Bible into English by Wycliffe at 
the same time served to raise the literary character and to fix the 
grammatical forms of the language, which had been passing through 
a period of rapid changes. 

The old system of inflexions had been undergoing a process of 
disintegration, the several endings in e, a, en, and an, by which 
cases and numbers, moods and adverbs, had hitherto been distin- 
guished, were fast being for the most part replaced by the single form 
of e, pai'tly as a result of a law in every language that words become 
worn down by use, like pebliles in a water-course smoothed and 
rounded by friction, — a change which proceeds most rapidly in the 
absence of a written literature, and tends to convert synthetic or in- 
flected into analytic oruninflected languages; and partly in obedience 
to a law less general, only because its conditions are not universal, viz. 
that when two races speaking different languages are merged into one, 
they, though freely using one anotlier's words, being unable to agree 
as to their inflections, end by discarding such syllables altogether so 
far as can be done without loss of perspicuity. 

To this law may be referred the triumph of the plural sign s or 
es over en or an, since French and English found themselves here at 
least at one, and the same may be said of the prefixes un and in, 
and the suffixes able and ible. 

This detrition of inflexions, as we may call it, culminated in the 
Elizabethan era in the almost total loss of the final e, before the 
expedients for distinguishing infinitives from participles, adverbs 
from adjectives, &c., had been reduced to rule. Its loss becomes a 
stumbling-block to readers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries 
scarcely less grievous than its retention does to those of Chaucer, 
appearing in the guise of inexplicable anomalies, and of seeming 

(59) 



ESSAY ON THE LANGUAGE. 17 

violations of the most ordinary grammatical rules, which have been 
laboriously cleared up by Dr. Abbt)tt in his admirable Shakespearian 
(rrammar. 

But though the new English had fairly established itself as a 
national and literary language it was still in a state of rapid growth 
and development, destined to undergo considerable changes in 
grammar, and even more in orthograi[)liy, ere it settled down into 
tlie ionn wliich it has retained without any material alteration from 
the time of the Stuarts to the present day. 

When Chaucer wrote printing was not yet invented ; a number 
of scribes, whose attainments did not perhaps go beyond the mere 
mechanical art of writing, were accustomed to work together while 
one read aloud the book to be copied, and each spelling as he was in 
the habit of pronouncing, and probably not seldom misapprehending 
the meaning of the author, it was inevitable that countless variations 
should arise in the text, some representing the sound of the spoken 
word, others the changes which had taken place in the pronuncia- 
tion between the dates of the original MS. and the particular copy> 
and others still such clerical blunders as are even now familiar to 
every one who has had to correct the proofs of any literary work. 

After the sixteenth century, when our language had become 
stereotyped as it were in grammar and orthography, various 
attempts were made to modernize the spelling of so popular a poet 
as Chaucer so as to make him intelligible to ordinary readers, but 
with the most unhappy results ; the men who undertook the task 
being almost entirely ignorant of the essential features of the 
language of the original work. 

With a prose writer the consequences might not have been more 
serious than tlie loss to posterity of an invaluable philological land- 
mark; but where metre and rime were involved, the result has 
been the entire destruction of all that constitutes the outward form 
of poetry ; while by the subsequent attempts of editors to restore to 
the mangled verses something like metrical rhythm, the language 
itself has been wrested and corrupted to an extent which would 
have rendered hopeless all idea of its restoration, were it not that in 
the Harleian MS. 7334 we possess a copy executed by a com- 
petent hand very shortly after the author's death, and though not 
free from clerical errors, on the whole remarkably correct. The 
late learned antiquary Mr. Thomas Wright adopted it in his 
edition, with a few emendations ; but since the publication by Mr. 
F. T. Furnivall of his six-text edition of Chaucer we have the 
(59) B 



18 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

means of collating it with the EUesmere, Hengwrt, Corpus, Lans- 
downe, Petworth, and Cambridge MSS. Dr. Morris has availed 
himself of the first three in his edition of the "Prologue, the 
Knightes and the Nonnes Tales " (Clarendon Press Series) ; but 
though he has consulted the last three also in cases of difficulty, he 
has found them of little real use. 

Chaucer himself seems to have had forebodings of the mutilations 
which were to befall his works, having already suffered from the 
negligence of his amanuensis, for in the closing stanzas of his 
" Troilus and Cressida," he says, 

" Go litel booke, go litel tragedie. 
And for ther is so grete diversity 
In Englisch and in writing of our tong. 
So pray I God that non miswritg thee, 
Ne thee mismetre for defaut of tong. 
And rede wherso thou be or eles song 
That thou be understond." 

And in language more forcible than elegant he imprecates a curse 
on this unlucky man — 

" Adam Scrivener, if evere it thee bifal 
Boece or Troilus for to \vrit6 new, 
Under thy long lokkes maist thou have the soall, 
But after my making thou write more trew. 
So ofte a day I mote thy werke renew. 
It to correct and eke to rubbe and scrape. 
And al is thorow thy negligence and rape." 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TO THE 
TIME OF CHAUCER. 

The term Anglo-Saxon, which is currently used to designate the 
language supposed to have been spoken by our forefathers before 
the Norman Conquest, is an invention of modern times, and has not 
even the advantage of convenience to recommend it. 

It was not until the close of the thirteenth and beginning of the 
fourteenth century, when the fusion of races was followed by the 
rise of a truly national spirit and ah outburst of literary activity, 
that a national language had any existence. The greater part of 
the thirteenth century was a period of dearth and degradation, a 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANQUAQE. 19 

dark age to the student and lover of our glorious tongue. What 
little was written was in Latin or French, English being considered 
not only by the proud nobles, but unhappily also by a pedantic 
priesthood, as unworthy of cultivation, and consequently, being 
relegated to the ignorant peasantry, it suffered the loss of thousands 
of good old words. Hitherto the clergy had written in the 
language of the people to whom they belonged, and had produced 
many works of great literary merit. These, however, may be easily 
recognized as belonging to two great dialectic divisions — a north- 
eastern and south-western, besides minor subdivisions. The great 
sundering line may roughly be drawn from Shrewsbury through 
Northampton and Bedford to Colchester, and represents the original 
partition of the country between the Angles and the Saxons. On 
the former fell the full force of the Danish invasions, and as we go 
further north we find the proportion of Scandinavian words and 
forms to increase. 

In the earliest times these languages were almost as distinct as 
High German and Low German (Piatt Deutsch), and the so-called 
Anglo-Saxon dictionaries confound and mingle the two without dis- 
tinction. The infusion of Danish or Norse into the Anglian led natur- 
ally to a clipping and paring down of inflections, a feature common to 
all mixed languages; whereas the speech of Wessex, the kingdom of 
Alfred, preserved much longer its rich inflectional character. Yet 
even these south-western people seem to have called themselves 
English rather than Saxons. At any rate King Alfred tells us 
that his people called their speech English, and Robert of Gloucester 
says of English, " The Saxones speche yt was, and thorw hem 
ycome yt ys." Bede, an Angle, calls them Saxons, but the word is 
of rare occurrence before the thirteenth century. Procopius in the 
sixth century calls them Frisians. 

It is, however, from the East Midland chiefly that the new English 
arose, where the monks of Peterborough compiled the history of 
England in English, in chronicles which were copied and scattered 
throughout the land. Their dialect incorporating all that was good 
from the others laid the foundation of that literary language which, 
again taking up a large French element, was destined to become the 
speech of the nation at large. 

Early in the fourteenth century Robert of Brunne, called also 
Robert Manning, living in Rutland, in the same linguistic province 
as the monks of Peterborough, wrote The Handlyny Synne, which 
marks an era in the history of our language and literature. In it 



20 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

may be seen actually or foreshadowed every feature of language, 
idiom, and grammar which distinguishes the English of to-day from 
that of King Alfred and from the Teutonic languages of the Con- 
tinent. His English is no longer inflectional but analytic, the 
difference being one of kind not of degree merely, as was the case 
in the Old Anglian when compared with the speech of the West 
Saxons. Of the language of The Handlyng Synne we may say as 
Sir Philip Sidney did of the Elizabethan age, " English is void of 
those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses, 
which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a 
man should be put to schoole to learne his mother tongue ; but for 
the uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the minde, which is 
the ende of speech, that it hath equally with any other tongue in 
the world." 

Of scarcely less value as marking another feature of our present 
language is the Ancren Riwle, wi-itten about 1220 b}' a learned 
prelate, into which French and Latin words are imported wholesale. 
Chaucer has been accused of corrupting our language; but if we 
compare his M'orks with the Ancren Riwle, written a century and a 
half earlier, we shall find that the affectation of French words and 
idioms by the author of the Rhde, an example which for nearly a 
hundred years none had dared to follow, puts Chaucer rather in the 
light of a restorer of our language, and justifies Spenser's description 
of him as "a well of English undefiled." He did not affect a 
retrograde course, but endeavoured to develop the new powers 
which English had acquired from this " happy marriage," the fruit 
of which has been described by none in more glowing terms than 
by the profound German scholar Grimm. " None of the modern 
languages has through the very loss and decay of all phonetic laws, 
and through the dropping of nearly all inflections, acquixed greater 
force and vigour than the English, and from the fulness of those 
vague and indefinite sounds which may be learned but can never 
be taught, it has derived a power of expression such as has never been 
at the command of any human tongue. Begotten by a surprising 
union of the tAvo noblest languages of Europe, the one Teutonic, the 
other Romanic, it received that wonderfully happy temper and 
thorough breeding, where the Teutonic supplied the material 
strength, the Romanic the suppleness and freedom of expression. 
. . . In wealth, in wisdom, and strict economy, none of the 
living languages can vie with it." Such being the character of the 
language in which Chaucer wrote, it is not necessary to give in 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 21 

detail the graniniiitical forms and inflections of" the older English 
dialects. 

It will be sufficient to indicate such as were still in use, but have 
been subsequently dropped or so worn down as to be no longer 
easily recognized, and to show at the same time how these are 
modified by the necessities of metrical composition, so as to be lost 
to the ear though properly retained in the orthography, in accord- 
ance with rules of prosody not unlike those familiar to readers of 
Latin and French poetry, and which held their ground more or 
less in English down to the time of Milton. 

The use of the final e in the language of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries presents the greatest difficulty to all who are 
unacquainted with the grammatical construction of the early and 
middle English. It was not, as it now is, a merely conventional 
sign for marking the long sound of the preceding vowel, as in the 
modern words bar and bare, for which purpose if is indifferent 
whether it is placed at the end of the syllable or immediately before 
the vowel to be lengthened, as in bare or bear, sere or seer; nor was 
it, as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, inserted or omitted 
at the whim of the writer or convenience of the printer, when 
we may often see the same word spelled with and w^ithout it in the 
same or consecutive lines ; nor was it, as in the artificial would-be 
antiquated diction of Spenser's Faerie Qiieene, employed without 
any certain rule either as " an aping of the ancients," as Ben 
Jonson called it, or for lengthening out the line to the number of 
syllables required by the peculiar metre borrowed from the Italian 
poets, and to which the more rigid English tongue would otherwise 
have refused to bend; but it was a real grammatical inflection, 
marking case and number, distinguishing adverbs from the corre- 
sponding adjectives, and in certain verbs of the "strong" form 
representing the -en of the older plural, e.f/. he spak, thei spake, for 
spaJcen, like the German er sprach, sie sprachen; so that to write, as 
the modernized texts have it, he spake, would be a blunder as gross 
as the converse they speaks would be now, and to pronounce they 
spake as we do is to rob the line of a syllable and the verse of its 
rhythm and metre, and, if the word be at the end, it may be of its 
rime, as for instance where the indirect objective cases time and 
Rome rime with by me and to me. 

The following summary of the peculiar features of Chaucer's 
grammar is founded on the essay of Prof. Child, and Dr. Morris' 
Introduction to his Chaucer's Prolo<rue, «&c., mentioned above. 



22 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

NOUNS. 

Number. — 1. The plural is mostly formed by adding -^8, pro- 
nounced as a distinct syllable. 

" And with his stremSs dryeth in the grev^s 
The silver drop^s hongyng on the lev^s." 

Knightes Tale, 11. 637-8. 

-s, which has now almost entirely replaced the -es, was as a rule 
used only in words of more than one syllable and in those ending 
with a liquid, as palmers, pilgrims, naciouns, &c. 

Such forms as bestis, othus, are probably the provincial or dialecti- 
cal usages of the scribes employed. 

2. Some nouns form their plurals in -en or -n (the -an of O.E.), as 
asscken, been (bees), eyghen (eyes) [Scot, een], flon (arrows), schoon 
(shoes), [Scot, shoon], and oxen; fon or foon (foes), and Jcyn, which 
remained till the seventeenth century as kine. 

3. Brethren, children, with the obsolete dowjhtren and sistren, are 
formed by adding -n to an older plural form in O.E. -e, A.S. -u. 
The O.E. childre, &c., persists as childer, &c., in the provincial dialect 
of the northern counties. 

4. Deer, scheep, swin have never had a plural termination; folk, 
hors, night, thing, and yeer or yer have acquired such only in recent 
times, the plural in the earlier ages of our language having had the 
same form as the singular. 

5. Feet, men, geese, teeth are plurals formed by a vowel change 
only. 

Case. — 1. The possessive case singular is formed by adding -^s 
(now mostly -s). 

" Ful worthi was he in his lord^s werre." Prol. 1. 47. 

2. The possessive plural had the same form, foxes tales, menries 
wittes. But when the nominative ended in -en it was sometimes 
unchanged, as "his eyghen sight." 

3. In O.E. fader, brother, dovghter were uninflected in the posses- 
sive case; thus "my fader soule," Prol. 781; ^^bi other sone," 
K. T. 2226. 

4. Some old feminines of the Saxon 1st declension, which made 
their possessives in -an, had dropped the termination ; thus we find 
ladye grace, sonne upriste (rising), herte blood, wideive sone, and we 
still speak of Lady day and Lady bird. 

5. The indirect objective (dative) occurs sometimes as a distinct 
case, and ends in -^, as holte, bedde, &c. 



HISTORY OB' THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 23 

ADJECTIVES . 

Now uiiinflected had in early English two forms, the definite and 
indefinite, the former used after demonstrative adjectives, of which 
the so-called definite ai-ticle is one, and possessive pronouns (thus 
differing from the modern German usage), and the indefinite in all 
other circumstances. In Saxon each was declined, but in Chaucer 
the only inflection is found in the definite form which ends in -^, as 
"the yony^ sonne," "his half^ cours." This -^ is however generally 
dropped in words of more than one syllable. 

The vocative case of adjectives is distinguished by an -e, as 
''hec^ brother," K. T. 326, "O stronrj^ God," except in words of 
French origin, and therefore of recent introduction, as " gentH 
sire." 

Degrees of Comparison. — The comparative is generally formed 
as now by adding -er to the positive. The O.E. termination was 
-re, which is retained in de7're (dearer), ferre (farther), neire (nearer), 
sorre (sorer). 

Lenger, strenger, and the extant elder are examples of inflection 
together with vowel change. 

Bet (bettre or better) and 7no (for mox"e) are contracted forms. 

The superlative is made by adding -este or -est to adjectives and 
•est to adverbs ; kext (highest), and next, extant (nighest), are con- 
tractions. 

The plural is formed by adding -e, not -es, " smale fowles," Prol. 9 ; 
but adjectives of more than one syllable, and all when used predi- 
catively, drop the -e. Some French words form the plural in -es, as 
" places delitables." 

Demonstratives. 

In O.E. the so-called definite article the was in the plural tho, 
a form occasionally, though very rarely, used by Chaucer. The 
neuter singular was that, but except in the phrases " that oon" and 
" that other," contracted into toon and tother, Chaucer never uses 
that otherwise than as we do now. 

He frequently employs tho for those, as " tho wordes," and " oon 
of tho that," and he writes the plural of this as tltise, thes, or these 
indiscriminately. 

AttS, a word of very frequent occurrence, is a corruption of the 
Saxon at tham, the old objective, O.E. attan, atta, masc. and neut., 
atte)', fern., "atte beste," "a<i? Bow." 



24 The cAiirTERBUiiY tales. 

TUllce = the like (A.S. thyllic, thylc), " thilke text," Prol. 182, 
= that text. Swich, Prol. 3, and sike, Prol. 245 (A.S. srnjlk = swa 
lyk) = so like, our such. 

That like = the same (A.S. ilk). Scotch, " Graham of that ilk,'' i.e. 
of that same clan or place [must not be confounded with the Scotch 
ilka, A.S. ceIc = each]. Same did not come into use till about the 
year 1200. 

Som . , . som = one . . . another. 

" He moot ben deed, the kyng as schal a page ; 
Som in his bed, som in the deep6 see, 
Som in the larg6 feeld, as men may se." 

Knightes Tale, 2172-4. 

PEONOUNS. 

Singular. Plural. 

( Nom. I, Ich, Ik, 

< Poss. min (myn), mi (my), 

( Obj. me, 

( Nom. thou (thow), 

•j Poss. thin (thyn), thi (thy), 

( Obj. the, thee. 

Masc. Fern. Neut. All Genders. 

Nom. he, she, hit, it, yt, thei, they. 

Poss. his, hire, hir, his, here, her, hir. 

Obj. him, hire, hir, here, hit, it, yt, hem. 

Independent or predicative forms are min (pi. mine) ; oure, oures; 
thin (pi. thine); youre,youres; hire,heres (hers); here, heres (theirs). 
The forms owres and yozires were borrowed from the Northern 
dialect. 

Thou is often joined to its verb, as sihaltoio, woldestoiv, Nonne 
Prestes Tale, 525 ; crydestow, Knightes Tale, 225. 

The objective (dative) cases of pronouns are used after imper- 
sonal verbs, as "memette;" "him thoughte;" after some verbs of 
motion, as "goth him;" "he rydeth him.;'' and after such words as 
ivel, wo, loth, and leef. 

Whos [whose) and whom are the possessive and objective cases of 
who. 

Which is joined with that, thus, "Hem whiche that wepith;" 
"His love the which that he oweth." Alone it sometimes stands for 
what or what sort of, as — 




HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 25 

" Which a miracle tlier befel auoon." 

Knightes Tale, 1817. 

" And whiche they weren, and o/ivhat degre." 
Prol. 40. 

What is used for wJnj like the Lat. quid, 

" What schulde he studie and make himselven wood?" 
Prol. 184. 

That is sometimes used with a personal pronoun along with it, 
thus — 

" A knight ther was, and tliat a worthi man, 
Tliat from the tyni6 that he first began 
To ryden out, he lovede chivalrye." 
Prol. 43-45. 

" Al were they sorg hurt, and namely oon. 
That with a spere was thirled his brest boon." 
Knightes Tale, 1851-2. 

In the second instance, that his = whose. 

mio and who so are used indefinitely in the same way as our 
"one says," "As who seith," *' Who so that can him rede," Prol, 
741. 

Men and the shortened form me, which must not be confounded 
with the objective of J, were used from a very early period down to 
the seventeenth century in the sense of " one," like the German 
"man sagt," &c., and the French "on dit," &c. "Me tolth" in 
the passage quoted from Robert of Gloucester (see page 15) is 
an instance, and one of the latest is to be found in Lodge's Wits 
Miserie. 

" And stop me (let one stop) his dice, you are a villaine." 

VERBS. 

I. The so-called weak verbs, or those which form the past tense 
hy the addition of the suffix -ed, were thus declined : — 

Present Tense. 

SINGULAR. PLURAL. 

1. I lov6, We lov-en or lovC. 

2. Thou lov-est, Ye lov-en or lov6. 

3. He lov-eth. They lov-en or lov6. 

Past Tense. 

i. I lov-ede, We lov-eden, lov-ede. 

2. Thou lov-edest, You lov-eden, lov-ede. 

3. He lov-ede, They lov-eden, lov-ede 



ab THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

The MSS. of Chaucer's poetical works frequently have loved, 
those of his prose very rarely. 

In some, as the Harl. MS., we find has for hast, dos for dost, an 
evidence of the influence of the Northumbrian, in which the 2nd 
pers. sing, ended in -es, and we sometimes meet with the ter- 
mination -eth in the 3rd plur. pres,, simulating the singular, owing to 
the fact of that being the plural inflexion of all three persons in the 
southern counties = -ath in A. Sax. 

" And over his heed ther schyneth two figures." 

Knightes Tale, 1185, Harl. MS. 

We often find -th for -eth, as spekth for speheth. 

Saxon verbs whose roots end in -d, -t, and rarely in -s, are con- 
tracted in the 3rd sing, pres., as sit for sitteth, writ for writeth, 
halt for holdeth, fint for Jindeth, stont for stondeth (stands), and 
rist for riseth. 

II. Some verbs of the weak conjugation form the past tense by 
adding -de or -tS instead of -ede, as heren, herde; hiden, hidde; 
kepen, kepte; but if the root end in d or t, preceded by another con- 
sonant, -e only is added instead of -de and -te, as wenden, ivend^ ; 
sterten, sterte ; letten (to hinder), lette. 

III. In some verbs forming a link between the weak and strong 
conjugations we have a change of the vowel root together with the 
addition of the suffix -de or te, as sellen, solde; tellen, tolde; seche 
(to seek), soughte; and others in which modem English has aban- 
doned the vowel change, as delen, dalte (dealt) ; leden, ladde (led) : 
leven, laftS (left). 

The Strong Verbs 

Are those which form the past tense by merely changing the root 
vowel, as sterten, to die, starf, and the past part, by the addition of 
-en or e, besides a vowel change which may or may not be the same 
as in the past tense, as storven or storve (O.E. ystorven). Cf. Ger. 
sterhen, starb, gestorhen. 

The 1st and 3rd persons singular of the past tense had no final e, 
as printed in some modern editions ; the three persons plural ended 
in -en or -e, and the 2nd person singular in -e, frequently dropped, or 
occasionally in -est. 

Some strong verbs had two forms for the past tense, one simple 
and the other taking the suffix of weak verbs — 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 27 

Present. Past. 

Weep, wep or weptS. 

Creep, crop or crept6. 

A number of the older verbs of this conjugation, in which the 
root vowel of the past participle was not the same as that of the past 
tense, employed it in the plural of the latter thus — 

Sterven, past sing, star/, p. plur. stoi-ven; p. part. {y)storven. 

Riden, „ rood or rod, „ riden; ,,. {y)riden. 

Smiten, „ smoot; „ smiten; „ {y)sniiten. 

This diflference between the nuinbers was soon lost. 

Subjunctive. 

The present singular ends in -e, the plural in -en ; the past 
singular in -ede, -de, or -te, the plural in -eden, -den, or -ten, in all the 
persons ; except in a few such forms as sjpeke we, go we. 

Imperative. 

The only inflections are an -eth, or occasionally an -e in the 
2pd pers. plural; and in verbs conjugated like tellen and loven, an 
-e in the singvdar also. 

The Infinitive. 

Originally the infinitive ended in -en (the Saxon -an), but the -n 
was often dropped, leaving an -e only, a change which began in the 
south. 

The so-called gerund, really the objective (dative) case of the 
infinitive, and known by being preceded by to, in the sense of " for 
the purpose of," " in order to," &c., was formed from the former 
by adding -e, and must not in its full or contracted forms be con- 
founded with the infinitive. 

Ex. to doon-e = to don-ne. In Prol. 134, "no ferthing scne"= /or 
to senne. In 1. 720, "for to telle " is the gerund also, but the -n has 
been discarded. 

The present participle usually ends in -ynff, or -?/»i/e when the 
rime demands it. Originally the participle ended in -inde or -ind in 
the south, -ande or -and (occasionally met with in Chaucer) in the 
north, both forms being employed in tlie east midland. 

Verbal nouns were formed by the termination -ung or later -inff, 



28 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

and then the participles were assimilated to them by changing -inde 
and -ind into -ynge, -yng, or -ing, as in our present language. 

The infinitive in -an or -en was also under certain circumstances 
reduced to the same termination -ing, and the several forms co- 
existing in our language present much difficulty to students. 

The past participle of weak verbs ends in -ed or -d, or occasionally 
in -et or -t ; of strong verbs in -en or -e, with change of the root vowel 
in some, and they are all sometimes preceded by the old prefix y-, i- 
(A.S. ge-), as i-i'onne, i-falle, y-clept. 

Anomalous Verbs. 
Those whose inflexions cannot be brought under any rule, some of 
which are defective, and others, as to go, whose wanting parts are 
made up by borrowing the corresponding members of others, are the 
truly irregular verbs. This name has also been most unhappily given 
by grammarians trained in the schools of Greek and Latin to those 
of the strong conjugation because they are the most removed from 
the inflectional systems of those languages; whereas they are the 
most characteristic of the Teutonic family, and in that sense the 
more regular. Words taken from the Latin are thus instinctively 
in every instance referred to the weak conjugation as the less 
peculiarly Teutonic of the two. 

1. Ben, been, to be; 1st sing. pres. ind. am; 2nd, art; 3rd, is; 
plur. been, aren, are; past, was vjasf, was, and were; imp. sing, be, 
pi. beth; p. part, ben, been. 

This, the *' verb substantive," is in fact made up of portions of 
three distinct verbs, which long coexisted in different dialects or 
even in the same so late as the seventeenth century, as may be seen 
in the A.V. of the Bible and in Milton, and to this day among the 
peasantry. 

2. Conne, to know or to be able; pres. ind., 1st, can; 2nd, can or 
canst; 3rd, can; pi. connen, conne; past, 1st and 3rd, couthe, cowthe, 
cowde; p.p. couth, coud. The I in the modern word has been 
inserted through a false analogy with would and should. 

3. Darren, dare; pres. ind., dar, darst, dar; pi. dar, dor re; past, 
dorste, durste. 

4. May; pres. ind. sing., 1st and 3rd, may, mow; 2nd, maysji or 
maist; pi. mowen, moive; pres. subj. mowe; past tense, 1st and 3rd, 
mighte, moghte. 

5. Mot, must, may; ind. pres. sing., 1st and 3rd, mot^ moot; 2nd 
must, mx>ot; pi. mooten, moote; past tense, moste. 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 1^9 

6. Oicen, to owe (moral obligation); pres. oiveth; past, ovghte, 
aughte; pi. oii/jhten, omjhte. 

7. Schal, shall (compulsion) ; pres. ind. sing., 1st and 3rd, schal; 
2nd, schalt; pi. sc/iullen, schuin, Sihul; past, svhulde, scholde. 

8. Thar, need (Ger. dilrfcn) ; pres. ind. sing, ihar; past, thurte; 
subj. 3rd, ther. 

9. TT7<t'??, to know ; pres. ind. sing., 1st and 3rd, wat, wot; 2nd, 
7cost; pi. witcn, xcite, woole; past, 2viste. 

10. TTt/, will; pres. ind. sing., 1st, wille, toil, wolle, wol; 2nd, wilt, 
tvolt; 3rd, ivile, wole, wol; pi. woln, xoillcn, willc; past, ivolde. 

It has the full meaning of the Latin volo, e.g. " Owre swete Lord 
of heven, that no man wil perische" (i.e. neminem vult perdere), 
Persones Tale. 

Negative Verbs. 

Nam = am not. Nylle, nyl = will not. 

Nys — is not. ' Nolde — would not. 

Nas — was not. Nat, not, noot = knows not. 

Nere = were not. Nost = knowest not. 

Natk = hath not. Nyste, nysten = knew not. 
Nadde, nade = had not. 

ADVERBS. 

1. Adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding -e to the latter, 
as hrightc, brightly ; deepe, deeply ; loioe, lowly. This is the explan- 
ation of the seeming use of the adjective for the adverb in modern 
English, and which is called by some grammarians the "flat 
adverb." 

2. Others are formed as now by adding -lyche or -ly, as schortly, 
rudelyche, .pleynly. 

3. And a few have e before the -??/, as holdehj, trewely, softUy. 

4. Some end in -en or -e, as ahoven, above; abouten, aboute; 
withouten, withoute; siththen, siththe, since. Many have dropped the 
-n, retaining the -e only, as asondre, behyiide, hyneth^, biyonde, 
bytwene, henne (hence), thenne (thence), qfte in Chaucer, though 
often is the more usual form at present, selde (seldom), soone. 

5. Adverbs in -es: necdes, needs; ones, once; twies or tide, twice; 
thries, tkrie, thrice; unvethes, scarcely; whiles, bysides, togideres; 
kennes, hence; thennes, thence; wheiines, whence; agaynes, ayens, 
against ; amonges, among, amongst ; amyddes, amidst. 

6. Of-newe, anew, newly (cf. of yore, of late); as-now, at preseijit; 



30 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

on slep^, asleep (fell on sleep, A.V. Acts xiii. 36) (cL on honting, a 
hunting, &c.). 

7. There and then occasionally stand for where and when. 

8. As, used before in, to, for, ly, = considering, with respect to, 
so far as concerns. 

" As in so litel space." Prol. 87. 

As is used before the imperative in supplicatory phrases — 

" As keep me fro thi vengeaunce and thin yre." K. T. 1444. 
" As sendg love and pees betwixe hem two." K. T. 1459. 

(Cf. use of que in French.) 

9. But, only (be-out) takes a negative before it. "I nam, but 
deed." K. T. 416. Cf. again the French, "Je ne suis que ..." 

10. Two or more negatives do not make an affirmative. This is 
the usage of the A.S., and still holds its ground among " uneducated" 
persons. 

" He never e yit no vileinye ne sayde 
In al his lyf unto no maner wight." Prol. 70, 71. 

PEEPOSITIONS. 

Occasionally til = to (cf. the German his), unto — until, up =: 
upon, and uppon = on. 

CONJUNCTIONS. 

Ne . . . ne = neither . . . nor ; other . . . other = either = . . or 
(cf. Ger. oder) ; ivhat . . . and = both . . . and. 

THE FINAL E. 

The use and meaning of the final e in the several parts of speech 
may be thus summed up. 

In many nouns and adjectives it represents the Anglo-Saxon 
terminations in -a, -e, or -u, and is then always sounded : asse and 
cuppe = A.S. assa and cuppa; herte and mare = A.S. heorte and 
mare; hale and wode — A.S. hcalu and wudu; dere and drye = A.S. 
dcore and dryge. 

It is sounded when it stands as the sign of the objective indirect 
(or dative) case, as root^, hreethe, heethe (Prol. 2, 5, 6), and in bedde 
and hrigge, from bed and brig. 

It is sounded when it marks — 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 31 

(a) The definite form of the adjective, " the yong^ sonne." 
Prol. 7. 

{h) The plural of adjectives, " smalS fovvles." Prol. 9. 

(c) The vocative of adjectives, " stronyS god!" K. T. 1515. 

In verbs it is sounded when it represents the older termination 
•en or -an as a sign of — 

(a) The infinitive, as to " seek^, tellS." Prol. 17, 38. 

(b) The "gerund," as " sen^.'' Prol. 134. 

(c) The past participle, as " i-ronn?, i-falley Prol. 8, 25. 

{d) And in the past tenses of weak verbs in -de or -te^ as wenfS, 
coiodM, wold^, fedd^, wept^. 

It is sounded in adverbs where it — 

(a) Represents older vowel-endings, as sone, twiS, thi-i^. 

(6) Marks the adverb from the corresponding adjective, as fair^, 
rights = fairly, rightly. 

(c) When it stands for the O.E. -en, A.S. an: aboutS, ahovS, 
O.E. abouten, aboven, A.S. abutan, abufan. 

(d) When followed by -ly in the double adverbial ending -ely, as 
hertely, lustely, sanely, treicehj. 

It is silent in the past tenses of weak verbs in -ede, — ed, as lovede. 
Prol. 97. 

It is mostly silent in — 

(a) The personal pronouns oure, youre, hire, here. 

(b) And in many words of more than two syllables. 

The final unaccented e in words of French origin is generally 
silent, but often sounded as in French verse. The scanning of each 
particular line must decide. 

YEESinCATION. 

The poetry of the Greeks and Romans was purely metrical. In 
their languages the distinction between long and short vowels was 
strongly marked, and the lines were composed of a definite number 
of feet, the feet consisting M two or more syllables long or short 
following one another in a regular order. Rimes when they occurred 
accidentally were looked on as faults. 

In the later and debased age of the Latin language, when the 
pronunciation became corrupted, the regular metres gave way to 
verses composed of a fixed number of syllables, guided by accent 
rather than quantity, and with rimes in regular order. 



32 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

This form of versification first appears in the later Latin hymns 
of the Western Church, and was adopted from the first in the poetry 
of the Romance languages. 

Quite different was the verse employed by the early Germanic 
and Scandinavian poets, its distinctive feature being alliteration. 
Two more or less emphatic words in the first, and one in the second 
line of each couplet began with the same consonant. 

In the north and west of England the alliterative verse held its 
ground so late as the fifteenth century, but in the southern and 
eastern shires the riming verse was employed in the thirteenth. 

The Vision of Piers Plowman (a.d. 1362) is a good example of 
alliterative verse. 

" I was weori of wandringe, 
And went me to reste 
Under a hrod banke 
Bi a bourne syde. 
And as I lay and leonede 
And lokede on the watres, 
I slumberde in a slepynge, 
Hit sownede so murie." 

In this extract the words in italics constitute the alliteration, the 
others, as was in the first, Bi in the fourth, and so in the last, are 
unemphatic, and contain the characteristic letter of each couplet 
only by accident. 

Chaucer, a man of general culture, living in the south-eastern 
counties, and familiar with the poetry of Italy and France, naturally 
chose the metrical and riming style of verse. 

His Canterbury Tales (except those of Melibeus and the Persone, 
which are in prose) are written in what is commonly called the 
heroic couplet. The lines consist of ten syllables, of which the 
second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth are accented, or as the 
classical scholar would express it, they consist of five iambs. Very 
often, oftener indeed than is noticed by the ordinary reader, there is 
an eleventh and unaccented syllable at the end, the verse being then 
identical with iambic trimeter catalectic of the Greek and Latin 
poets; and far more rarely there are but nine syllables, an un- 
accented odd syllable beginning the line, and followed by four 
iambs. 

To take a few unequivocal examples from the Prologue. The 
typical verse is seen in 11. 19, 20 — 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 33 

Byfel I that in | that se | soun on | a day. 
In South I werk at | the Tab | ard aa | [ lay. 

The verse of eleven syllables in 11. 11, 12 — 

So prik I eth hem | nature \ in here | corag | es, 
Thanne long | en folk | to gon | on pil | grimag | es. 

And that of nine In 1. 391 — 

In I a gowne | of fal | dyng to | the kne. 

The opening couplet, though generally read as decasyllabic, is 
really composed of eleven, as will be seen by a reference to the 
grammar of Chaucer — 

Whan that | April | 16 with | his schow | res swoot | 6, 
The drought | of Marche | hath per | ced to | the root | 6. 

The word non^s, our nonce, must be read as a dissyllable in 1. 523, 
or it would not rime with non is in that following, and in 11. 21, 22, 
pilgrimage and corage are probably to be read as in French poetry, 
the third syllable lightly sounded. So in the Parson's Prologue, 
1. 17, 345, Wright's ed.— 

" Do you I plesaun \ c^le \ ful as | I can." 

Short unemphatic syllables are often slurred over, or two such 
consecutive syllables pronounced almost as one. These contractions 
may be arranged under several distinct heads. 

1. That which has entered so largely into our spoken language, 
by which wandering and wanderer are pronounced wandering and 
wanderer, earnest as cam'st, &c. 

2. The synalcepha of classic prosodists, or elision of a final vowel 
before another word beginning with a vowel or a silent h. This 
was far more frequent in our early poetry than is generally known, 
and often practised by Milton in his Paradise Lost. 

3. A method of obliterating a short syllable which is of very 
common occurrence in Chaucer, though, as it seems to me, inade- 
quately explained even by Dr. Morris and other equally eminent 
commentators. The final consonant of a word ending with a short 
syllable is in reading to he attached to the initial roioel of the next. 
It will be observed that in the great majority of contractions the 
following word begins with a vowel giving a clue to the proper 
reading. 

(59) C 



34 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Examples of the first are — 

" And thinketh | here cometh \ my mor | tel en | emy." K. T. 785. 
" Sche gad | ereth flour | 6s par | ty white | and rede." K. T. 195. 
" Schuln the | declar | en, or | that thou | go henne." K. T, 1498. 

Of the second or synaloepha are — 

" And cer | tes lord | to obi \ den your presence." K. T. 69. 
" "What schulde | he stud ] ie and make | himsel | ven wood." Prol. 184. 

Besides countless elisions of the terminal e which would have been 
sounded had the next word begun with a consonant. 

Synseresis, or the blending of two vowels in the middle of a word, 
is seen in — 

" Ne stud I Uth nat ; | ley hand 1 to ev [ ery man." Prol. 841. 

Where every is also contracted after the first method into two 
syllables. 

It is scarcely possible to scan a dozen lines without meeting an 
instance of the third mode of contraction, but a few examples may 
be given here — 

" And forth | we ride \ n a lit | el more | than pass." Prol. 819. 
" And won | derly | delyve | r and gret | of strengthe." Prol. 84. 
" As an I y rav | ens fethe \ r it schon | for blak." K. T. 1286. 
" A man | to light | a cande \ I at his | lanterne." 

Cant. Tales, 1. 5961, Wright's edition. 

" And though | that I | no wepe \ n have in | this place. " K. T. 733. 
Thou schul I dest neve | re outot \ this grov | 6 pace." K. T. 744. 

Whether is frequently sounded as a single syllable, and is some- 
times written wher. 

" I not I whether sche | be wom ] man or | godesse." K. T. 243. 
" Ne rec 1 cheth nev | ere wher I I synke | or fleete." K. T. 1539. 

Words borrowed from the French ending in -le or -re are pro- 
nounced as in that language, with the final e mute: table, temple, 
miracle, nolle, propre, chapitre, as tahV, tempV, miracV, nobV, propr\ 
chapitr'; and those of more than one syllable ending in -ance 
{-aunce), -ence, -oun, -ie {-ige), -er, -ere, -age, -une, -are, and -We, are 
generally accented on the last syllable (not counting the silent e), as 
acqueyntaiince, resoiin, manere, arauntdge, &c.; but occasionally the 
accent is thrown back as in modern English, e.g. bdttaille, K. T. 



HISTORY OB^ THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 35 

21 ; mdner, Prol. 71 ; fortune, each of these words being elsewhere 
accented on the last syllable. Even some purely English words 
exhibit the same variety, as hontyng and huntyny. K. T. 821 and 
1450. 

The -ed of past participles and the -ede of past tenses are to be 
alike pronounced as a distinct syllable, -ed ; thus perc^d, Prol. 1. 2, has 
two syllables, entutiM, 1. 123, y-pinched, 1. 151, have three, but 
lovede, 1. 97, and similar forms, are to be sounded lov-M, &c., with 
two, not three syllables. 

The initial h in the several cases of the pronoun he, in the tenses 
of the verb to have, and in the word hoiv, is so lightly sotmded as to 
admit of the elision of a final -e before it. 

" Wei cowde he dresse his takel yeniaiily." Prol. 106. 

Both e's would otherwise be sounded. 

In aU other words the initial h is too strongly aspirated to permit 
of this. 

Not only is the negative ne frequently shortened into an initial n- 
before am, is, hadtk, [ixadde\ wot, [iiot\ &c., but we meet with such 
contractions as thass for the asse, tabiden for to ahiden, &c. This 
may be merely due to the scribes. Cf. Prol. 450, where we have the 
elision in reading though not in the text. 

The metrical analysis of the first eighteen lines of the Prologue, 
given in p. 37, will be found to illustrate most of the foregoing rules 
of prosody, and will serve as a guide to the correct scanning of 
Chaucer's verse, which when read as it should be will be found as 
smooth and regular in its rhythm as any of the present day. 

In order to mark the pronunciation without deviating from the 
orthography of the best MSS. I have in this passage, as in the text 
generally, adopted the following simple devices and signs. 

The final e when naturally silent, or when, as in the words he, 
the, &c., there can be no doubt as to its pronunciation, is printed in 
small romans ; when, on the other hand, it is to be sounded where it 
is either silent or omitted in modern English, it is distinguished 
thus -S; and where an e which would be sounded under other 
circumstances is elided before a word beginning with a vowel or 
lightly aspirated h, it will be found in italics. 

Other vowels likewise when elided, whether by synahepha or by 
any of the contractions explained above, are marked by italics. 

If at the same tiiJil^it be borne in mind that the finals -es, -en, and 



36 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

-ed, being Saxon inflections, are, unless the contrary be indicated as 
above, to be sounded as distinct syllables, and that the -ede of the 
past tense is to be pronounced -ed, and that, with the exception of 
the few nine-syllabled verses, every line is either a perfect or a 
catalectic iambic, a little practice will enable the student to scan the 
poetry of Chaucer with ease. 

A very few irregular contractions, either poetic licenses or 
anticipations of future pronunciations, may be found, as in Prol. 463. 
where "thries haddc" must be read as our "iJirice had." 

"And thries | hadde sclie | ben at | Jeru I salem." 

I will conclude this section with a slightly altered transcription 
of Dr. Morris' remarks on the pronunciation and scanning of the 
passage on p. 37. 

1. The final e in Aprille is sounded ; but it is silent in the French 
words veyne, vertue, and nature, and in Marche, holte, and kouthe, 
because followed here by a vowel or lightly aspirated h. 

2. The final e in sicoote, smale, straunge, feme, and seeJce (in the 
last line) is sounded, as the sign of the plural. 

3. The final e in roote, breethe, heethe is sounded, as the sign of the 
objective (indirect) case. 

4. The final e in sivete, yonge, halfe is sounded, as the definite 
form of the adjective. 

5. The final e in sonne, ende is sounded, as representing older 
terminations. 

6. The final e in i-ronne is sounded, as representing the old and 
fuller ending of the past participle -en {y-ronnen). 

7. The final e in wende is sounded, as representing the -en of the 
plural. 

8. And in seeke (1. 17), as the -en of the older infinitive. 

7a. The full forms of the plural are found in slepen, maTcen, 

longen, and 
8a. Of the infinitive in seeken, in all of which it is of course 

sounded. 

9. The final -es in schowres, croppes, fowles, kalwes, strondes, 
londes, is sounded as the inflexion of the plural ; and 

10. In schires as that of the possessive case. 

11. Vertue, licour, nature, and corages are accented on the last 
syllable of the root, as being French words of comparatively recent 
introduction into English. 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 37 

Whan that | April | 16 with | his schow \ res swoot | 6 
The drought | of Marche | liath per | ceil to | the root | 6. 
Aiul bath I ed eve | ry veyn« | in swich | licour, 
Of which I vertue | engen | dred is | the flour ; 
Whan Ze | phirus | eke with | his swe | t6 breeth | 6 
Euspir I ed hath | in eve | ry holte | and heeth | 6 
The ten | dre crop | pes, and | the yong | 6 sonn | 6 
Hath in | the Ram | his hal | f6 cours | i-ron | n6, 
And smal | 6 fowl | es mak | en niel | odi-e 

10 That sle | pen al | the night | with o | pen eye. 

So prik I eth hem | nature | in here | corag | es :— 
Thaime long | en folk | to gon | on pil | grimag | es, 
And palm | ers for | to seek | en straung | 6 strond | es 
To fer I ne hal | wes, kouthe | in son | dry lond | es ; 

15 And spe | cially, | from eve | ry schi | res end | 6 

Of Eng I elond, i to Caunt | erb«ry | they wend | g, 

The ho I ly blis | ful mar | tir for | to seek | 6, 

That hem | hnth hoi | pen whan | that they | were seek | S. 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 



THE PEOLOGUE 



Whan that Aprille with his schowres swoote 

The droii^t of Marche hath perced to the rootS, 

And bathed every veyne in swich licoiir, 

Of which vertue engendred is the flour ; — 

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breethe 5 

Enspired hath in every holte and heethe 

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonnS 

Hath in the Earn his halfe cours i-ronne, 

1. Swoote. — Swot and swet (line 5) are the old forms of m-eet; the 

final e is here the sign of the plural, in line 5 of the definite. 

2. Perced — pierced ; the pronunciation long outlasted the spelling. 

Milton, L' Allegro, 137-8, makes pierce rime with verse. 

3. Sivich — such, from swa — so, and lie — like. 

4. Vertue. — The Fr. equivalent of the Eng. miglit, power. Of, like the 

Fr. de, means from or by. The sense is "By which virtue or 

power, viz. 'the sunshine and showers of spring, the flowers are 

engendered or produced." 'jCf. old couplet : 

"March winds and April showers 
Bring forth May flowers." 

Cf. : "Jesus knowing that virtue had gone out of him," Mark 

V. 30 and Luke vi. 19. Flour and flower are the same word ; 

first the bloom of plants, next a product of sublimation (chemical 

term), as flowers of sulphur, then any fine powder, as meal, 

wheaten flour. 

5. Eeh — also, Ger. audi. Sicete, see note, line 1. 

6. Holte = Holt, a wood or plantation ; extant as a provincialism, and in 

several local names, as Knockholt in Kent. 

7. Yonge soiine {yonge is the definite of yong). — Because he has as yet 

run through but one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, 

8. Halfe cours. — " The Man of Lawes" in the prologue to his tale tells 

us that it is the 18th of April : Chaucer in his Astrolabe always 
refers to the signs, not the constellations, and in his first figure 
places opposite the month of April the latter half of the Ram 



PROLOGUE. 39 

And smale fowles muken melodic, 

That slepeii al the night with open eye, 10 

So priketh hem nature in liere corhges : — 

Thanne luugen folk to gon on pilgrimages, 

And palmers for to seeken strauiige strondes, 

To fernS halwes, kouthe in sondry londes ; 



and the first half of the Bull. The former of these was now just 
completed ; the sun had run that half of the Ram which falls in 
April, I-roiine, i or y, the sign of the past, part., represents, 
doubtless too in sound, the O.E. ge-, retained in German. 

5, 10. Makcn and slepen are plurals, so is smale. 

11. Priketh = excites, urges, prompts. 

11. Hem = them, obj. pi. ; here, poss. pi. = their; the fem. poss. now her, 
is written by Chaucer hir, hive (see description of the Prioress, 
p. 49). In A.S. hira — their (all genders), hire — her. 

11. Corage. — Heart, from Lat. cor, Fr. cceur, heart. The meaning 

courage is secondary to this. 

12. To gon = to goen = to go. Our perf. icent is borrowed from another 

verb, to icend (see line 16), obsolete except in the phrase "to wend 
one's way." The Aryan root ga underlies nearly all the words 
implying motion in Sanscrit, Teutonic, and even Greek. Some 
derive the A.S. perf. edde from the root i, found also in Latin 
eo, ire, but this is doubtful, for in 0, H. German they seem to 
pass into one another. ^^ . i**^ 

13. Palmers. — A pilgx'im was one JjHKo made a single or occasional 

journey to a shrine withouwany special conditions ; a palmer, 
so called from the staff of a palm-tree which he carried as evidence 
of his having visited the Holy Land, i)rofessed poverty, and must 
pass his whole life in perpetual pilgrimages. Another badge of 
the palmer was some scallop-shells, as seen in the arms of families 
of the name of Palmer, presumed to have been gathered by him 
on the "straunge strondes" or foreign shores that he had 
visited. "Foreign" was the original meaning of strange, as still 
of the Fr. etranger. 

13. For to seeken. — The gerundial obj., not the infin. One must under- 

stand longen after palmers and wendcn before to feme halwes. 

14. FerM halwes, kouthe — distant saints known. Fern or ferren, from the 

adv. /«r, must be distinguished irom. foreign, Fr. forain, Low 
Lat. foraneus, from L. for as, out of doors, abroad. A g has 
been interpolated from a false analogy with reign = regnum. 
Others would explain this as meaning olden, ancient, A.S. fp'n. 



40 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

And specially, from every schires ende 15 

Of Engelond, to Canturbwry they wende, 

The holy blisful martir for to seeke, 

That hem hath holj3en whan that they were seeke. 

Byfel that, in that sesoun on a day, 
111 Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, 20 

Redy to weiiden on my pilgrimage 
To Caunterbiay with ful devout corage, 
At night was come into that hostelrie 
Wei nyne and twenty in a compainye, 
Of sondry folk, by aventilre i-falle 25 

In felaweschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle, 



Halwes = holy ones, saints. All Hallows' is All Saints' day. 
Kouthe, pi. of l-outh or coiUh, part, of cimnan, to know. Uncouth 
is unknown, strange, thence awkward. Outlandish, once foreign, 
has undergone the same change of meaning. 

17. Holy hlisfid martir. — Thomas k Becket, called also St. Thomas of 

Canterbury. 

18. Seeke. — PI. of seek, A.S. sexic — sick ; in the previous line it is the 

verb to seek. 

19. Byfel. — Verb impers., it befell or chanced. 

20. Tabard. — Defined by Speght, in his Glossary to Chaucer, as a 

sleeveless "jacket or coat, formerly worn by nobles in war, but 
now by heralds only. On it were emblazoned their arms, whence 
the expression " coat of arms." It was the sign of a well-known 
inn in Southwark, to which adjoined the house of the Abbot of 
Hyde, near Winchester, 

20. Lay = resided. "When the court lay at Windsor." — Merry Wives 
of Windsor, ii, 2. 

23. Was. — Collective singular. We should now say were. 

23. Hostelrie. — O.Fr, hostellene. Mod. Fr. kotellerie, lengthened from 
hostel, hotel, Eng. hotel. Our word host comes through the French 
from L. hospes, a guest, a host. Ostler, now the man in charge 
of the stables, is really hosiellier, or the keeper of the inn. Host, 
an army, is from L. hostis, enemy ; and the host or consecrated 
elements in the Roman Catholic Church from L. hostia, a sacrifice, 
first for victory over an enemy, then any sacrifice. 

25. AventHre. — Fr. ; in Mod, E. adventure. Chaucer accentuates French 
words on the last syllable. 

25. I-falle = i-fallen — fallen, i.e. by adventure or chance. 



PROLOGUE. 41 

That toward Caunterbury wolden rydg. 

The chambres and the stables weren wydS, 

And wel we weren esed atte bestS. 

And schortly, whan the sonnS was to restS, 30 

So hadde I spoken with hem everychon, 

That I was of here felaweschipe anon, 

And made forward erly for to rys6, 

To take our wey tlier as I yow devyse. 

But natheles, whiles I have tyme and space, 35 

Or that I forther in tliis talg pacS, 

Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun. 

To telle yow alle the condicioun 

Of eche of hem, so as it semede me, 

And whiche they weren, and of what degr6 ; 40 

And eek in what array that they were iune : 

And at a knight than wol I first bygynne. 



27. Wolden — would, past tense of mlU which had not lost its primary 

signification of to wish, L. volo. 

28. Weren — were. A.S. tcceron. 

29. Esed atte beste = entertained in the best manner. Easement is still 

used as a law term for accommodation. 

30. To reste = at rest. To is used in the western counties and in the 

U. States for at, as zii in German. 

31. Everychon — ever each one, every one. 

32. Anon = immediately, probably on an (instant). 

34. Ther as I yow devyse = where I tell you of. Devise was to describe, 

as advise to inform. Cf. trade term an advice. 

35. Natheless. — Not the less, nevertheless. 

35. Whiles, from ?r/;t7e=time; whiles = tvhilsf, a genitive form. 

36. I forther in this tale pace = I pass further in this tale. 

37. Me thinketh. — Same as "It semede me," in line 39: the vic is the 

dative case after the impers. verb it tlunketh. In A.S. and O.E. 
thencan = to think, and thyncan — to seem. The Germans keep 
up the distinction, ich denke, es diinkt viir. 
37. Acoi'dazoit = according. The Eng. ending -ing had not yet 
replaced the Fr. -ant. 

41. Inne, the adverb; in, the prep. 

42. Wol. — Not found in the oldest Eng. or A.S.; a quasi regular 

present suggested by the past wolde. 



42 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man, 

Tliat from the tyme that he first bigan 

To ryden out, he lovede chyvahye, 45 

Trouthe and honoiir, fredom and curteisie. 

Ful worthi was he in his lordes werre, 

And therto hadde he riden, noman ferrS, 

As wel in ChrisiJendom as in hethenessfe, 

And evere honoured for his worthinesse. 50 

At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne. 

Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bygonne 



43. Knight. — The primary idea conveyed by this word is that of a per- 
sonal attendant of any kind. In A.S. a disciple is leorning aiiht, 
but in O.H. Ger. of the 8th and 9th centuries hiehi is used with- 
out any qualifying words for servant, soldier, or disciple. Next 
it became restricted to the armed and mounted attendants on a 
king or noble, and those who before the rise of regular cavalry 
had received from the king or prince the right to fight on horse- 
back. The corresponding Fr. chevalier. It. cavaliero, Sp. caballero, 
and German ritter, all imply the act of riding. In German the 
hiecht in like manner at one time connoted horsemanship, but 
has been degraded to mean a stableman, or colloquially a mean 
fellow. 

45. Chyvalrye. — Chivalry, the rules and duties of knighthood. Fr. 

cheval, Low L. caballus = a horse. 

46. Mr. Earle considers these to be two pairs of synomyms, one Saxon 

and one French, illustrating the fact that we often find a Saxon 
and a French word for the same thing existing side by side in 
Middle English. This I doubt, for courtesie = the manners of 
courts, can hardly be defined as "fredom." 

47. Werre = wars. 

48. Ferre = comp. offer = far. No man further. 

49. Hethenesse — heathendom. He had, like many other knights of that 

age, served, when his own country was at peace, under several 
foreign princes as a volunteer or fi-ee-lance. 

51. Alexandria was taken by Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, in 

1365. 

52, lie hadde the bord bygonne. — An obscure expression. Cotgrave 

says " Gaigner le hault bout" = to win the highest prize, also 
to take the highest place at table, so that bord may be board 
= table; or it may be Low Ger. boort or M.H.G. bnhurt — joust, 
tournament. 



PROLOOUE. 43 

Aboven allS naciouns in PrucC. 

In Lettowe liadde he reysed and in RucC, 

No ciisten man so ofte of his degr6. 55 

In Gernade attS siegC liadde he be 

Of Algesir, and riden in Belmarie. 

At Lieys was he, and at Satalie, 

Whan they were wonne; and in the Greetc see 

At many a noble arive hadde he be. 60 

At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene, 

And fouirhten for oure feith at Tramassene 



53, 54. — Prnce, Lettow, and Rxice = Prussia, Lithuania (Ger. Lettau), 

and Russia. Our knight had served in these countries with the 
Teutonic knights who were engaged in constant hostiUties with 
their Pagan and Mohammedan neighbours. They had compelled 
the Pagan Slavs of Russia to embrace Christianity in the pre- 
ceding century, but the Lithuanians were still heathen, and 
though the Russian people had received Christianity at an early 
period, their country was overrun by Tatars, and they were 
stiniggling against the authority of the successors of Zinghis 
Khan, 

54, Reysed. — A, S. rcesan, to rush or make inroads into a country. Cf. 

our word race. The Germans use reisen = to travel. 
56, &c. — Algeziras was taken from the Moorish King of Granada 
(Gernade) by Alphonso XL of Castile in 1342, though Granada 
itself was not reduced till 1492. Lieys in Armenia and Satalie 
(Attalia) were taken from the Turks by Pierre de Lusignan, King 
of Cyprus, in 1367 and 1352 respectively. 

59. The Grecte see. — The Great Sea, the name frequently used in the 

O. T, for the Levant or eastern portion of the Mediterranean, to 
distinguish it from the Red Sea and the lakes of Palestine. 
It is used in the same sense by Sir J, Mandeville. 

60. Arive = arrival or disembarkation. 

61. Mortal = deadly. We still say mortal strife in poetiy or rhetorical 

language. Cf. Farad. Lost, line 1,2: 

" The fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death, &c. 

Our present usage is a return to the classical meaning of the 
word. 



44 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

In lystSs thries, and ay slayn his foo. 

This ilke worthi knight hadde ben also 

Somtyme with the lord of Palatye, 65 

Ageyn another hethen in Turkye : 

And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys. 

And though that he was worthy he was wys, 

And of his port as meke as is a mayde. 

He never 3/it no vileinye ne sayde 70 



63. Lystes. — Properly the inclosure for tournaments, &c. , like our modern 

ring ; then, as here, any single combat. 

64. like = same; A.S. ylc. Cf. Scot, "of that ilk;" as, "Sir James 

Grant of that ilk," that is, of Grant. 

65. Palatye (Palathia) in Anatolia, a lordship held by the Christian 

knights after the Turkish conquest. 

6Q. Ageyn = against. 

Q6. Hethen = any non-Christian, not necessarily an idolater. Heathen 
from heath, and pagan from pagiis, a village, were used to desig' 
nate those who adhered to the ancient religions while Christianity 
was as yet almost confined to the more intelligent inhabitants 
of the town. The first instance of this use of the word pagan 
occurs in an edict of the Emperor Valentinian, a.d. 368. The 
earlier fathers employed Gentile in the same sense. 

67. Sovereyn prys — highest renown. Sovereign, from Low Lat. 

superanus, from L. super, above; Sp. soverano. It. sovrano, O.Fr. 
souveraign, Mod. Fr. souverain. The g insinuated itself into 
the older French word through a false analogy with ixgne (L. 
regnum), a kingdom. Milton's familiarity with Italian led him 
to write sovran, and why should not we drop the g as the French 
have? Praise, prize, and j^'i'ic^ are all of the same origin, L. 
pretmm, value. 

68. Though that he was worthy. Worthy here means bold ; though bold, 

he was prudent and gentle or unassuming. 
70. Vileinye. — Any conduct unbecoming a gentleman. Villanns, from 
villa, a farm, was originally simply a serf, then by association of 
ideas a nide, unmannerly, low-bred fellow, then a blackguard, 
irrespectively of his social rank. Boor (Ger. hauer and Dutch 
hoer) has undergone the like change of meaning, and churl (A.S. 
ceorl or carl), a free tenant at will, a corresponding degra- 
dation. 



PROLOGUE. 45 

In al his lyf, unto no maner wight, 
/ne was a verray per%t gentil knight. 
But for to tell6 you of liis aray, 
His hors was good, but he ne was nou^ gay. 
Of fustyan he wered a gepoun 75 

Al bysmoterSd with his haburgeoun, 



71. No maner icight — no manner of wight. This word (A.S. %dht), now 

nearly obsolete, is a great loss to our language. It implied simply 
a human being, male or female. The Scotch have body as an equi- 
valent ; we are compelled, except in the expressions any-, some-, 
no-, and everj'body, to substitute creature, person, individual, 
or some other less appropriate Latin periphrase, 

72. Veiray perjight gentil knight. — Verray, O.F. vray, now rrai = true, 

truly. L. venis, true. (Ger. icahr. ) Perfight, now more correctly 
perfea, L. perfectus. In delight, L. delecto, we still retain the gh 
from a false analogy with light. Gentile and gentle are each 
derived from L. gens, a nation or family. The former, like the 
Greek ta ethnea (the nations) was used to distingi>ish the nations of 
the world from God's chosen people Israel, and later, heathens 
from Christians. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 2, speaks of "the false- 
hood of oracles, whereupon all gentility was built." The latter 
was applied in the age of chivalry to one whose family had been 
noble or armigeri, i.e. entitled to bear certain devices on their 
arms, for several generations, four in England and Germany, three 
in France, where the first was annohli, the second noble, the third 
im gentilhomme, a title to which man}'^ a duke or marquis could 
not lay claim. Our James I. told his nurse that he could make 
•her son a lord but not a gentleman. Only gentlemen in this 
sense were eligible for several knightly orders, as the Teutonic ; 
and the rule obtains still, in the case of some continental or at 
least German orders. Next gentle, as in the text, implied the 
possession of those moral and social qualities supposed to mark 
a man of noble blood. It means far more than meek (line 69), 
indeed it includes all that has been described in Hues 68-71. 
74. Ne. . . nought. A double negation in O.E. does not constitute an 
affirmative. 

74. Gay refers to attire or dress, not to manners. 

75. Gepoiin. — Dim. of gipe, a short plaided coat. 

76. Haburgeoun. — Dim. of or synonymous with hatiberk, from O.G. hals^ 

neck or chest, and hergen, to cover ; a coat of chain-mail without 




46 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

For he was late ycome from his viagg, 
And wente for to doon his pilgrimage. 

With him ther was his sone, a yong Squyer, 
/A lovyere, and a lusty bacheler,! 80 

With lokkes crulle as they were leyd inj ^esse. 
Of twenty"^erTie was of age I gessg. 
Of his stature he was of evene lengthg, 
And wondurly dely ver, and gret of strengths. 
And he hadde ben somtyme in chivachie, 85 

In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Picardie, 

sleeves, before the introduction of plate armour; it was long 
enough to protect the abdomen and legs. 

"Helm nor hauberks twisted mail."— Gray's Bard. 

76. Bijsmotered. — Besmuttered or soiled with rust and blood. 

77. Viage = voyage or travels. Voyage, as in French, was used of 

travels by land as well as by sea down to the end of the seven- 
teenth century. He had just comS back from the wars, and had 
vowed to go straight to the shrine to return thanks for his pre- 
servation. 

79, Sqwjer — esquire, O.F. escuyer, from Lat. scutiger, in classic Latin an 

armour-bearer, in mediaeval language successively an armed 
attendant on a prince or knight, a gentleman armed and mounted 
at his own expense, and one entitled to armorial bearings. Es- 
cuage was pecuniary composition for such personal service. 

80. Lusty = merry. 

80. Bacheler. — Few words have puzzled antiquarians and etymologists 

more than this. Modern authorities derive the word ( Fr. bachelier, 
0. Fr, bacheler) from Low L. baccalarms, the owner of a small 
farm, a farm -servant. Knights Bachelors, the lowest and oldest of 
the orders of knighthood ; and Bachelors in the universities are 
the lowest order of graduates in the several faculties of arts, law, 
medicine, divinity, &c. The academic term is always written 
Baccalaureus, as if it had something to do with laurel wreaths. 
Bachileria as an old law term signified freemen below the rank 
of nobles, A bachelor is also an unmarried man. 

81. Crulle — curled. Dutch krol, Irolle. The displacement of the r is 

common. E. bird in A,S. is brid. 

84. Delyver — lithesome, active. Fr. delivre, L. liber = free. 

85. Chivachie = Fr. chevaucMe, a raid or expedition of cavaliy {cheval, a 

horse). 

86. At Cressy, &c., under Edward IIL 



PROLOGUE. 47 

And born him wel, as in so litel spacS, 

In hope to stondeu in his hidy grac6. 

Embrowded was he, as it were a mede 

Al ful of fresshS flourSs, white and reede. 90 

Syngynge he wjis, or floytynge, al the day; 

He was as fressh as is the moneth of May. 

Schort was his gouiie, with sleeves longe and wydu. 

Wel cowde he sitte on hors, and fairS rydS. 

He cowdS songes wel make and enditg, 95 

Juste and eek daunce, and wel })urtray and write. 

So hote he lovede, that by nightertale 

He sleep nomore than doth a nightyngale. 

Curteys he was, lowly, and servysable, 

And carf byforn his fader at the table. 100 

A Yeman had he, and servauntz nomoo 
At that tymS, for him lust ryde soo ; 



87. Born him wel. — Acquitted himself well. 

88. Lady grace. — The old possessive fern, was e, not es', lady stands for 

ladye. Cf. Lady Day. 

89. Embrowded — embroidered, i.e. in his dress. . ,. . 
91. Floytynge = fluting, or playing the flute. .X-^--^ 

95. Endite = recite or relate. / 

96, Juste and eek daunce = joust, or contend ip. a tournament, p,nd also 

dance. 

96, Purtray = portray = draw or paint. He was as accomplished as he 

was manly and strong. 

97. Hote — hotly. E is the adverbial ending. 

97. Nightertale — night-time. Tale has here its primary import of a 
number or reckoning, viz. of the hours. So, too, to tell meant to 
count. Cf. : " The tale of the bricks," Ex. v. 8 and 18. " We 
spend our years as a tale that is told," Ps. xc. 9. " The sliei)herd 
tells his tale," i.e. counts over his sheep. Milton, L' Allegro. 
In modern Gcr. zahl (number) and zahlen (to number) retain 
their original sense exclusively. 

99. Servysahh = willing to be of service, to make himself useful. 

100. Caj/= carved. 

101. Yeman — a yeoman, an attendant above the rank of a menial 

servant. It was used in a secondary sense of the middle class 
of the rural population, and lastly to signify a small landholder 



48 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

/ And he was clad in coote and hood of grene. 
l^ shef of pocok arwgs bright and kene 

Under his belte he bar full thriftily. 105 

Wei cowde he dresse his takel yemanly ; 

His arwes drowpede nou9't with fetheres lowe. 

And in his hond he bar a mighty bowe. 

A not-heed hadde he, with a broun visagg. 

Of woode-craft cowde he wel al the usagg. 110 



not a gentleman. Giods, O.H.G., a young man or servant, 
gwds gywch^ a strong brave man, Kremsier's Urteuiscke 
Sprache. 

102. Ryde, for ryden — to ride. The inf. " He had a yeoman, but no 

more servants at that time, for it pleased him to ride so " (without 
more escort). 

103. He, i.e. the yeoman. 

104. Poc'^k arwes.— Arrows winged with peacock feathers. Ascham in 

bis Toxophilus pronounces peacock feathers to be greatly inferior 
to those of the goose for real use, though thought by some to be 
more showy. Peacock is from Fr. jx^on, L. pavo, pavojiis. It 
has nothing to do with peas, any more than gooseben'y, Fr. 
groseille, has with geese. These words illustrate the tendency 
to press some meaning into the spelling of a foreign word. 

105. Thriftily = carefully, sparingly. This good old word thrift is almost 

obsolete, having been superseded by the cumbrous economy, 
which really implies the whole of housekeeping. Cf. j^olitical 
economy, of which retrenchment is but a small part. 

106. Dresse — set in order, make straight, direct. Fr. dresser. It. 

dirizzare, L. dirigere. The original idea of making straight is 
retained in the military terms of "dressing the men," i.e. by 
their heights, and " dressing up " a rank or a part of it. 

106. Takel. — Tackle, though now used only of ship's cordage and 

pulleys, or of those of certain machines, originally meant any 
implements whatever. Cf. gear, which, except in head-gear, 
is almost exclusively a nautical term nowadays. 

107. Nottght = not. Ger. nicht. 

109. Not-heed. — Cropped head. Cf. Roundheads. To oiot, according 

to Bailey's Dictionary, 11th ed. 1745, was still used in Essex 
for to crop or shear. 

110. Cowde, in its primary signification of he knew. 



PROLOGUE. 40 

Upon his arm he bar a gay bracer, 

And by his side a swerd and a bokder, 

And on that otlier side a gay dagg6re, 

Harneys^d wel, and scharp as poynt of spere ; 

A Cristofre on his brest of silver schene. 115 

An horn he bar, the ba-\vdrik was of grene; 

A forster wjis he sotlily, as I gessS. 

Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, 
That of hire smylyng was f ul symple and coy ; 
Hire gretteste ooth ne was but by seynte Loy ; 120 
And sche was cleped niadame Englentyne. 
Ful wel sche sang the servise devyne, 
Entun^d in hire nose ful semely ; 
And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly, 



ill. Bracer — a covering for the arm. Fr, hras, the arm. Cf. bracelet, 
dim. of same word. According to Ascham it was a sleeve of 
leather without nails or buckles, which with a shooting glove 
formed a gauntlet, and served not only to protect the arm from 
the bowstring, but presented a smooth surface for the string 
to glide along. 

112. Bol-eler. — Buckler. Fr. lonelier, akin to hvcHc, a shield of leather 
strengthened with an iron boss and plates. 

114. Harneysed — harnessed = equipped, in reference here to the sheath 

and belt. 

115. Cnsiofre. — A brooch wdth the effigy of St. Christopher, held as a 

charm. 

115. Sckene ^hrighi; A.S. sdne. Cf. sMning. Ger. schon, beautiful. 

116. Batcdrik. — O.H.G. halderich, deriv. of belt, a military belt, often 

decked with jewels. 

117. Forster. — Forester. Ger. jvrster. 

117. Sothlji — truly. Cf. forsooth, soothsayer, &c. 

119. Coy = quiet. Fr. coi. 

120. Loy. — Probably Louis, a mild oath. See note on line 164. 

123. Nose. — Speght would read voice, but nose is found in all the best 
MSS. 

123. Semely. — The three syllables to be distinctly sounded. 

124. Fetysly, or fetously, \ixiQY featly. From O.Yr. fa Ictis, neatly done, 

prettily. 
(59) D 



50 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

After the scole of Stratford atte Bo we, 125 

For Freuscli of Parys was to hire uiiknowe. 

At mete wel i-taught was sche withalle; 

Sche leet no morsel from hire J.ippes falle, 

Ne wette hire fjDgres in hire sauce deepg. 

Wel cowde sche carie a morsel, and wel keepe, 130 

That no drope ne fil uppon hire brest. 

In curtesie was set ful moche hire lest. 

Hire overlippe wyped sche so clene. 

That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene 

Of greece, whan sche dronken hadde hire draughte. 135 

Ful semely after hire mete sche raughte. 

And sikerly sche was of gret disport, 

And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port, 

And peyned hire to counterfete cheere 

Of court, and ben estatlich of manere, 140 



125. Scole. — School (in sense of style) of Stratford, i.e. Norman French; 

not unlike the old Law French. 
127. At mete. — At meals. These simple directions for behaviour at table 

are to be found in Caxton's Booh of Curtesye, The Babies Book, 

and other mediseval manuals. 
129. Sauce = a saucer, a deep plate. For scmce as a made dish, see 

note on 1. 625. Fingers had not yet been superseded by forks 

and spoons. 

131. No drope ne fil — no drop fall. Double negative, as in French 

and A.S. 

132. Lest. — Pleasure. She affected to be a woman of fashion and good 

breeding. 

133. Ovevlipfe. — Upper lip, 

134. Ferthing. — Literally a fourth part. Cf. farthing (of a penny). 

Hence the smallest fragment. 
136. Mete — food of any kind; butcher's meat was until the seventeenth 
century always termed flesh, as in our Bible, where also the 
7?iea^offering means one consisting xisually of the fruits of the 
earth. 

136. Raughte. — The old past tense of reche, to reach. Like teach, taught. 

137. Sikerhj. — Surely. Ger. sicherlich. 

137. Disport. — A noun ; we now use it only as a verb. 
139. Peyned hire = she laboured or studied; a verb reflective; 'pains and 
painful long retained the meaning of effort without any thought 



PROLOGUE. 61 

And to ben liolden digiic of reverencS. 

But for to speken of hire coiiscienct^, 

Sche was so charitable? and so pitous, 

Sche woldC weepe if that sclie sawe a nious 

Caught in a trapjjc, if it were deed or bleddS. 145 

Of smale houndes hadde sche, that sche fedde 

With rosted tleissh or mylk and wastel breed. 

But sore wepte sche if oon of hem were deed, 

Or if men smut it with a yerde smertu : 

And al was conscience and tendre hertS. 150 



of suffering. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. v. 19, speaks of the " painful 
travels" of Biblical translators, i.e, careful labours. 

139. Cheere. — O.Fr. chiere. Countenance, aspect. Cf. "Be of good 

cheer." 

140. Estatlic/i.— stately. See note on 1. 132. 

141. Digne — worthy; L. diyiius. 

145. Deed =. dead. 

146. Houndes. — Probably dogs not necessarily for hunting. 

147. Wastel. — A cake. Fr. gdfeau; the O.Fr. was gastel, in Picardy 

ouastel; Anglo-Norman wastel ; not the usual food of dogs, unless 
ladies' pets. The finest flour called bolted (or sifted) was made 
into manchet bread, O.Fr. vdcheite, viiche, L. mica; the un- 
bolted into chete or coai^se wheaten, i.e. brown bread; while the 
middle classes and servants used mescelin, or maslin, a mixture 
of wheaten and rye flour, and the poor a still coarser though 
most nutritious meal of rye, oatmeal, and lentils. Fancy breads 
were also made under the names of paijneimffe, march, or mass- 
pane, &c. 

149. Men smot. — Men, or O.E. me, stands, like the Ger. ma7i, or Fr. on, 
O.Fr. om, i.e. homme, for one; if men pi. were meant the verb 
would be sviote. 

149. Yerde. — Originally a rod or stick of any kind; secondarily, a 
measure ; so pole is used in either sense. Yard retains its primary 
meaning in a ship's yards ; and pcrtica, the source of our perch, is 
simply a pole or long staff in Latin and Italian. 

149. Smerte. — Probably the adverb smartly. 

150. The context shows that conscience here and in line 142 means 

rather feeling, sensibility, than the high moral sense impUed by 
the word now. 



52 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Ful semely hire wympel i-pynchM was ; 

Hire nose tretys; hire eyen greye as glas; 

Hire mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed; 

But sikerly sche hadde a fair forheed. 

It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe ; 155 

For hardily sche was not undergrowe. 

Ful fetys was hire cloke, as I was waar. 

Of smal coral aboute hire arme sche baar 

A peire of bedes gauded al with grene ; 

And theron heng a broch of gold ful schene, 160 

On which was first i-writen a crowned A, 

And after Amor vincit omnia. 



151. Wympel. — Wimple, a plaited white linen covering for the neck and 

shoulders, worn mostly by elderly women and nuns. I-pynched, 
drawn close. 

152. Tretys. — A.N., long and weU proportioned, probably connected 

with the Fr. trait, drawn out. 

Harl. MS. reads streiyht, but tretijs Ellesm. suits the verse 
better. 

153. Reed = red. The proper name Beed or Jieid is the same. 

154. Fair.— Fine, not fair complexioned. 

156, Hardily. — Same as sikerly in line 154. 

157. Waar = aware. 

159. Bedes. — The original meaning of beads was prayer, A.S. hiddan, 

to pray, Ger. heten, then the "beads" used as aids in counting 
the paternosters and ave-marias to be repeated consecutively. 
The "bidding prayer" in the Church of England service, in 
which the minister calls on the people to pray for the whole state 
of Christ's church militant here on earth, owes its name to the 
pre-reformation practice of the priest before beginning his 
sermon calling on the people to pray silently for the king, pope, 
&c., and to say a paternoster, an ave-maria, &c,, on their beads. 
Gauded al ivith grene. — The larger beads were called (jaudies, 
because gatided or ornamented with gold, silver, or colours. 
(Palsgrave, ) 

160. Broch or hvoch was used not for a clasp-pin, but for any such 

jewel or ornament ; here it seems to have been a kind of locket. 
In 1845 a brooch in the form of an A, with the Norman French 
inscription, "Jo fas amer, e doz de amer," apparently of the 
fourteenth century, was found in a field in Dorset. 



PROLOGUE. 53 

Another Nonne with hire haddo sche, 
That was hire cliapeleyu, and Prestes thre. 

A Monk ther was, a fair for the maistrie, 165 

An out-rydere, that loved venerye ; 



163, 164. These lines, which have given rise to many conjectures, have 
been fully cleared up by Mr. Furnivall in a letter to the Academy 
(May, 1880), by an appeal to a lady who had herself held the office 
of secretary and chaplain to the lady abbess of a convent of 
Benedictine nuns in England. She says, inter alia, that one of 
her duties was to hold the crozier when on the great festivals the 
abbess intoned the hymns and read the capitulums, lessons, and 
prayers, her hands being occupied with her book. On the Con- 
tinent the chaplain held the book, for in an old French ceremonial 
of the Abbey of Montmartre, dated 1669, there is mention not 
only of the " Chapeline " but also of the " Porte- Crosse." 
* ' Vne des soeurs sera choisie par la mere abbesse jiour estre sa 
chapeline. Sa place au chceur sera du cost6 droit, proche du 
siege de la m^re abbesse, qui lors qu'elle sera obligee de chanter 
quelque chose, la chapeline viendra a sa cost^ droit afin de luy 
tenir le livre ; ce qu'elle fera encore aux processions et autres 
cdr^monies."'^ Further on in the same chapter is the office of 
" Porte-Crosse," — " une sceur qui viendi*a au cost6 gauche de la 
m^re abbesse lorsqu'il faudra se servir de la crosse," &c. 

As to the presence of priests in a female society Mr. Furnivall 
had shown that the Abbey of St. Mary's, Winchester, when 
broken up at the Reformation had no less than five priests ; and 
the same Benedictine nun explains why several priests were 
necessary. In the Benedictine abbey (for nuns) at Rheims, 
there were "chajjels in the church, each of course with an altar, 
and some of these chapels were each to have daih/ mass. Now 
a priest can say but one mass daily, therefore where more than 
one daily mass was required, more priests must necessarily be 
kept." 

As to the equivocal " St. Loy," the lady naively observes, " I 
can only believe that ' St. Loy ' was^an expression, no real name, 
and thus (!) no real oath." 

165. A fair for the maistrie — one who bid fair to excel in his profession. 

166. Out-njdere. — One who could ride cross country. 

Veiierye = hunting ; Fr. venene, from I/at. venari, to hunt, 
whence also our word venison. 



54 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

A manly man, to ben an abbot able. 
Full many a deynte hors hadde he in stable : 
/And whan he rood, men might his bridel heere 
i Gynglyng in a whistlyng wynd as cleere, 170 

/And eek as lowde as doth the chapel belle. 
( Ther as this lord was kepere of the sellS 

167. A sly hit at the worldly habits of the monks. Chaucer's description 
of the friar is satirical and suggestive enough, and both in strong 
contrast with the worthy parson or parish priest, satisfactory 
proof that many a truly Christian minister lived in those dark 
days though history has failed to record their good deeds. 
170. Gynglyng — jingling. Fashionable riders hung small bells to their 
bridles and harness. Wycliffe, a contemporary of Chaucer, 
denounces the worldliness of the clergy, their "fair hors (pi.) 
and joly and gay sadeles and bridels ringing by the way." 
172-176. The meaning of this passage is "At the cell where this lord 
was the superior the rules of SS. Benedict and Maur were 
observed; but since these rules were old and somewhat strict 
he let them be regarded as obsolete, and followed the newer 
fashions," 

Tlx&r as = where that. 

Selle. — A cell, originally the private chamber of each single 
monk, was afterwards used to designate a religious house which 
was not incorporated or itself possessed of endowments, but in 
connection with and dependent on some larger monasteiy. Of 
such a house this lord, as he is ironically called, was the superior, 
not having as yet attained the rank of abbot, though probably 
destined to be one before long. 

St. Benet or Benedict of Nursia in Italy, bom a.d. 480, founded 
the order of Benedictines, whose mode of life was severely ascetic. 
Their rules were revised by Benedict of Aniana in Languedoc, 
A.D. 817. In the middle ages they were the greatest conservators 
of learning, and the first English monks were of this order, which 
from the twelfth century became the wealthiest and most influ- 
ential in Christendom. 

St. Maur, or Mauritius, a disciple of St. Benedict. 

Pace =,'pass by : for " olde thinges pace " the Harl. MS. reads 
" forby hem Tpa.ce, " forby meaning away. 

Space. — Lansd. MS. ^ace=: steps. 

Olde thinges. — This is the reading of most of the MSS., and I 
have adopted it instead of that of the MS. Harl. forby Item, 
which appears to give no clear sense. 



PROLOGUE. 65 

The reule of seyiit Maure or of seiiit Beneyt. 

Bycause tliat it was old and somdel streyt, 

This ilke monk leet old(5 thingSs pace, 175 

Aud hekle after the uewo world the spacS. 

He ^af iiat of that text a i)ulled hen, 

That seith, that hunters been noon holy men ; 

iS'e that a monk, whan he is reccheles 

Is likned to a lissche that is waterles; 180 

This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloystre. 

But thilke text held he not worth an oystre. 

And I seide his opinioun was good. 

What schulde he studie, and make himselven wood, 

Uppon a book in cloystre alway to powre, 185 

Or swynke with his handes, and laboure, 

As Austyn byt ? How schal the world be served ? 

Lat Austyn have his swynk to him reserved. 

177. Pulled. — Probably pylled^haXdi, scabby, or moulting (as \i peeled). 

Text, an authoritative quotation; so the term scripture was 
applied to the writings of saints, &c. , as well as to the Bible. 

178. Noon — none. 

179-181 Reccheles — rQcV\.e?>s,, careless. A.S. reccan, to think, regard. 

All the oldest MSS. read reccheles, though Mr. T. Wright, on 
the authority of one at Cambridge, proposes cloysterles. The 
"text," he observes, is taken from a Decretal of Gratian — *'Sicut 
piscis sine aqud caret rifd, ita sine monasterio monachus," though 
Chaucer more probably found it in the life of Louis IX. by le 
Sieur de Joinville, who says, "The Scriptures {sic) do say that a 
monk cannot live out of his cloister without falling into deadly 
sins, any more than a fish can live out of water without dying." 
Had Chaucer, however, written cloysterles the explanation in 
1. 181 would have been superfluous and redundant. Prof. Ten 
Brink suggests resetles, i.e. without shelter; but, unsatisfactory 
as reccheles may be, all authority supports it. 

183. Seide = said. 

184. Wood.— A.S). wod, from wedan, to rage or be mad, Cf. Mod. 

Ger. xcuthen, to rave. In this sentiment he shows his disregard 
of the traditions of his order. 1 Vnd — mad, is still used in 
Scotland. 

186. Swynke = to toil. 

187. Byt — bids. St. Augustine of Canterbury enjoined on his clergy 

a life of the utmost st.rictness and simphcity. 



56 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Therfore he was a pricasour aright ; 
Greyhoundt^s he hadde as swifte as fowels iu flight; 190 
Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare 
Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. 
I saugh his sieves purfiled atte honde 
With grys, and that the fynest of a londe. 
And for to festne his hood under his chynne 195 

He hadde of gold y-wrought a curious pynne : 
A love-knotte in the grettere ende ther was. 
His heed was balled, and schon^s eny glas, 
And eek his face as he hadde ben anoynt. 
He was a lord ful fat and in good poynt; 200 

His eyen steepe, and roily ng in his heed, 
That stemede as a forneys of a leed ; 
His bootes souple, his hors in gret estate; 
Now certeinly he was a fair prelate ; 
( He was not pale as a for-pyned goost. 205 

A fat swan loved e he best of eny roost. 

189. Pricasour = a hard rider, one who pricks or spui's his horse. 

191. Of, i.e. in. 

192. Lust — pleasure. — At no cost would he give up such pursuits. 

193. Purfiled. — Fr. pourfiler, to embroider; here it means trivimed. L. 

filum = a thi'ead. 

Atte honde — at the hand (or cuff). 

194. Orys. — A costly (gray?) fur. Fr, rp-is, gray. 
198. His head was bald. 

200. In good poynt. — Rendering of Fr. embonpoint . 

201. Steepe. — Not steep, deep, sunken, but an old word meaning bright. 

"His twa ehnen semden steappre thene sterren," his two eyes 
seemed brighter than stars. 

202. Stemede as a forneys of a leed. — Shone or glowed as the furnace of 

or under a cauldron. The O.E. steme was not restricted to the 
steam of water. The old dictionary called the Promptorium 
Parvulorum defines L. flamma as the " steme of fyre." 

203. It was the fashion to wear high boots of soft leather fitting closely 

to the leg. 

204. A prelate is an ecclesiastic who is set over (jjrelatus) or has juris- 

diction over others ; a bishop or abbot. Cf. note on line 172. 

205. For-pyned. — Tormented or wasted. For is intensitive. To pine 

meant primarily to suffer; "pinede under Ponce Pilate," Old 
Creed. Thence to waste away through pain. 



PROLOGUE. 67 

His palfray was as broun as is a berye. 

A Fkere tlier was, a wautoim and a ineiye, 
A lyinytour, a fill soleinpiiu man. 

In alle the ordres foure is noon that can 210 

So moche of daliaunce and fair langage. 
He hadde i-naad many a fair mariage 

207. Palfray = a horse for the road. Fr. palefroi, from Low L. 

pararered%ts, from prefix para, and verecbis, from Lat. reho, to 
carry or draw, and rhcda, a four-wheeled carriage. 

208. Wantoiai. — Literally untrained, then lively, wild, &c. Wan is an 

O.E. negative prefix like un. We meet successively in Middle 
English the forms unitowen, waiiifoicen, nnfoim, and wanton. 
Cf. to tow = to draw, and draw = train. Tlauhope = rfespair, 
wantmst = c?i'strust, &c. 

Merye = pleasant. Merryweather = fine weather. 

Bishop Burnet, Ilisf. of Reformation, bk. iii. (p. 189 of 1st folio 
ed.), says of the friars, "They, were not so idle and lazy as the 
monks, but went about and preached and heard confessions and 
carryed about indulgences and many other pretty little things, 
Agnus Dei's, rosaries, and pebles, &c., and they had the esteem 
of the people wholly engrossed to themselves. They were also 
more formidable to princes than the monks, because they were 
poorer, and by consequence more hardy and bold. . . . They 
likewise . . . were great preachers, so that many things 
concurred to raise their esteem with the people very high, yet 
great complaints lay against them, for they went more abroad 
than the monks did, and were believed guilty of corrupting 
families." 

There were four orders of mendicant friars. 1. The Dominicans 
or preaching friars, who settled at Oxford in 1221, and were known 
as Black friars. 2. The Franciscans or Gray friars, founded by 
Francis of Assisi in 1209, and appearing in England in 1224. 3. 
The Carmelites or White friars, who first came here in 1240 ; and 
4. The Augustin or Austin friars, introduced by Adewold, con- 
fessor to Henry I., whose vow included not only poverty and 
chastity but silence. Their superior in England was ex-officio an 
alderman of the city of London. 

209. Lymytonr.— One who had a limit or district assigned to him within 

which he might beg alms. 

210. Can = knows. 

211. Daliaunce. — Small talk, entertaining conversation. Akin to tales 



58 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Of yonge wymmen, at his owne cost. 

Unto his ordre he was a uoble post. 

Fill wel biloved and faraulier was he 215 

With frankeleyns ovei'-al in his cuntrc, 

And eek with worthi wommen of the toun : 

For he hadde power of confessioun, 

As seyde himself, more than a curat, 

For of his ordre he was licenciat. 220 

Ful sweetely herde he confessioun, 

And plesaunt was his absolucioun ; 

He was an esy man to ^eve penaunce 

Ther as he wiste to han a good pitaunce; 

For unto a poure ordre for to ^eve 225 

Is signe that a man is wel i-schreve. 

For if he ^af, he dorste make avaunt, 

He wiste that a man was repentaunt. 

in sense of stories. O.E. dalyyn (Promp. Parv.), talen, line 772, 
Swiss daleii, talen. This is the source of our tale, a story, quite 
distinct from tale (of bricks, &c.), which is akin to the Ger. 
zahl — number. 

To dally is to gossip, not to delay. 
214. Post = a pillar or support. Cf. Gal. ii. 9. 

219. Curat. — A clergyman having "cure of souls." Fr. cur^, an in- 

cumbent, not as now an assistant minister. So in the Church of 
England service prayer is offered " for all bishops and curates," 
including under these two terms the whole ministry of a Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church. 

220. Licentiat. — He had the pope's license to give absolution for all sins 

and in every place, whereas the "curate" must refer graver 
cases to his bishop. 

224. Wherever he knew that he should have a good pittance. Pitaunce, 
originally the extra allowance of food served out to the inmates 
of a religious house on the greater festivals; then any allowance 
of food ; and, lastly, a small allowance of anything, money, &c. 
It seems to be connected with 2}iefy. It. pieta and jiietajiza. 

225-232. A satire on the hypocrisy or at least the convenience of buying 
absolution worthy of Wy cliff e himself. May not wepe. — May is 
used in the original sense of has not the power to. Although it 
smarts him sorely. 



PROLOGUE. 59 

For many a man so hard is of his hertS, 
He may not wepe altliough him sore smertS. 230 

Therfore in stetle of wepyug and prayeres, 
Men moot ^ive silver to the pourg freres. 
His typet was ay farsed ful of knyfes 
And pynnes, for to givii fairu wyf6s. 
And certaynli he hadde a mery noote. 235 

Wei couthe he synge and [)leyen on a rote. 
Of yeddynges he bar utterly the prys. 
His nekke whit was as the Hour-de-lys. 
Therto he strong was as a champioun. 
(He knew the tavernes wel in every toun, 240 

And eveiich hostiler and tappesttjre, 
Bet than a lazer, or a beggest^re, 

233. Typet zvas ay farsed. — His hood was always stuffed. The quasi- 

hood worn by clergymen not being graduates, to distinguish 
them from choristers or other surpliced laymen, is called in the 
LVIII. Canon and the Rubrics a tippet. It was used by the friars 
as a pouch or bag for the trinkets which they sold, combining 
the trade of pedlar with the practice of begging, and doubtless 
finding it the more lucrative of the two, Farsed = stuffed, Lat. 
farcio, Fr. farcir, to stuff, to cram, now used chiefly in cookery. 

234. Ellesmere MS. reads yonge tvyfes. 

236. Hote. — Some kind of musical instrument. O.E. to roie = to hum 

a tune, to say or learn by rote in an automatic sing-song manner, 
a far more significant expression than learning by heart. 

237. Teddy nyes. — A.S. gydd — a song, yyddian, to sing. Norse gidda — 

to shake, whence our giddy. Cf. quaver and quiver. Yeddings 
were properly ballads. 

Bar utterly the prys. — Carried off unquestionably the prize. 
See note on line 67. 

239. Champioun. — This word, though found in French, is Teutonic. 
O.H.G. champ)h, M.H.G. kampf, A.S. camp, a contest; champ 
is used in some parts of England. 

241. Tappestere = a. barmaid; the masc. was tapper. Originally -er 
was the masc. and -ster the fem. affix of agency. Thus brewer, 
hrewster; wehher (weaver), webster; spinster, a young immarried 
woman as being still employed at the spindle. In the fourteenth 
century the distinction of sex began to be lost, and maltster, 
huckster, songster, and baxter (a baker) were used of men. 
Songstress is a double feminine, so is sempstress; seamer and 



60 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

For unto swich a worthi man as he 

Acordede not, as by his faculte, 

To haue with sike lazars aqueyntatince. 245 

It is not honest, it may not avauncg, 

For to delen with no swich poraille, 

But al with riche and sellers of vitaille. 

And over al, ther as profyt s-ihulde arise, 

Curteys he was, and lowe of servyse. 250 

Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous. 

He was the beste beggere in his hous. 

For though a widewe hadde nogt oo schoo, 

So plesaunt was his In principio, 

seamster being the proper forms. In yoicngster, gamester, kc, 

it implies contempt. 
242. Bet than = better than; better and betest or best were regularly formed 

from bet, but when this was superseded hy good, bet was occasionally 

used for the adv. better. 

Lazer. — A leper, from the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Cf. 

lasaretto. 

Beggestere. — See note on line 241. 
242-245. It did not suit so worthy a man in respect of his ecclesiastical 

position to have acquaintance with such-hke lepers. 

246. Honest = respectable. 

May not avaunce = is not calculated to advance his interests. 

247. Poraille — poor people, rabble. 
249. Over al — generally. Ger. iXherall. 

Ther as profyt schulde. — Where profit might. 

252. After this line, the two following are added in the Hengwrt MS. 

only :— 

And yaf a certeyne ferme for the graunt. 
Noon of his bretheren cam ther in his haunt. 

They are an evident interpolation. 

253. Oo schoo = one shoe. 

^54. In principio. — Tyndale, after speaking of the priest's superstitious 
practice of crossing himself, says, " And if he leave it undone he 
thinketh it no small sin, and that God is highly displeased with 
him, and if any misfortune chance, thinketh it is therefore, which 
is also idolatry, and not God's word. . . . Such is the 
limiter's saying of ' In principio erat verbum ' (In the beginning 
was the word), from house to house." Tyndale, pp. 61, 62, in 
his Answer to Sir T. More's Dialogue. Parker Soc. 



PROLOGUE. 61 

Yet wolcle he liave a fertliing or he wentC. 255 

His purchas was wel better than liis rente. 

And rage he couthe as it were riglit a wheipe, 

In love-dayes ther couthe he mochil help6. 

For ther he was not lik a cloysterer, 

With thredbare cope, as is a poure scoler, 260 

But he was lik a maister or a pope. 

Of double worstede was his seiny-coj)e, 

That rounded was as a belle out of i)ressg. 

Somwhat he lipsede, for his wantounesse, 

To make his Englissch swete ujwn his tungg; 265 

And in his harpyng, whan that he hadde sungg, 

His ey^en twynkeled in liis heed aright, 

As don the sterres in the frosty night. 

This worthi lymytour was cleped Huberd. 

255. Ferthing. — Not necessarily a coin. It may be a trifling gift of any 

kind. See note line 134. 

256. His receipts by these means were much greater than his regular in- 

come. A proverb or sentiment quoted from the Romance of the Rose. 
" Mieux vault men pourchas que ma rente." 

257. As it tcere ngld. — Lansd. and Corpus ]\ISS. right as it were; Harl. 

and pleyen as a tckelpe. 

258. Love-dayes. — Days fixed for settling disputes by arbitration without 

having recourse to the law. The author of Piers Plowman's 
Vision condemns them as hindering justice, and as perverted 
to the enrichment of the clergy. I well remember when staying 
with the Protestant pastor of Sachsenhausen in the principality 
of Waldeck, twenty years ago, the Friedegericht or court of peace, 
which the old man used to hold in his library once a week, where 
he thus settled disputes, but without fee or reward. 

259. For ther — further, moreover. 

260. Cope. — An ecclesiastical vestment, originally a cloak worn out of 

doors in processions, but afterwards during mass and at other 
functions. It was semicircular in shape, without sleeves, but 
provided with a hood and fastened in front by a brooch or clasp. 
After a time it was richly embroidered or even jewelled. 

262. Semy-cnpe = a shorter cloak or cape. 

263. Brfle (tut of presse. — A bell fresh from the mould, 

264. L//>se^?e.— Lisped. Mark the changed order of the p and 5. So 

ask was once axe, bird, hrid, &c. 



62 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

A Marchaunt was ther with a forked berd, 270 
In motteleye, and high on horse he sat, 
Uppou his heed a Fhiundrisch bevere hat; 
His botes elapsed faire and fetysly. 

C' His resons he spak ful solempnely, 
Sownynge alway thencres of his wynnynge. 275 

He wolde the see were kept for eny thinge 
Betwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle. 
Wei conthe he in eschaimgS scheeldes selle. 
This worthi man ful wel his wit bisette ; 
Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette, 280 



270. Forled herd. — The usual fashion among franklins and burghers. 

The Anglo-Saxons wore their beards cut thus, not so the Nor- 
mans. 

271. Motteleye. — Motley. A garb affected by would-be gallants. 

272. Flauiidrisch. — From Flanders, Flemish. 

273. elapsed. — See note on line 264. 

274. Solempnely = solemnly. This word, the L. sollennis, derived 

from the old Oscan sollis — all, every, and annus, year, meant 
first an anniversary, was then applied to any religious festival, 
and in modern languages to anything grave and serious though 
not exactly religious. 

275. Soionynge = sounding. So Harl. EUesm. Heng. and Camb. MSS., 

but Corpus, Petworth, and Lansdowne read schewynge. 
Thencres = the increase. 

276. He wished that the sea were protected from pirates. 

For eny thinge — for fear of anything. It was for this that the 
traders paid the dues of tonnage and poundage to the king. 

277. Middelburgh. — A seaport of Walcheren in Flanders. 

Orewelle. — Now the Orwell, the port of Harwich. 

278. He knew well the rates of exchange, and how to make a profit on 

his coin in the various money markets. 

Sdteeldes. — The French ecus, so called from having on one 
side the figure of a shield, the corresponding English coin was 
for like reason called a croivii. 

279. His wit bisette. — Fmi ployed his skill or knowledge. Wit. (A.S. 

witan = to know) long retained ' this meaning. In the A.V. 
we read of " witty inventions," Prov. viii. 12, of the Divine 
wisdom. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. v. 57, 59, uses u-it and witty of 
ingenious but certainly not humorous interpretations of Scrip- 
ture in reference to the sacraments. 



/ 



PROLOGUE. 63 

So estatly was he of governaunce, 
With liis bargayns, and with his chevysauncS. 
'For sothe he was a worthi man withalle, 
But soth to sayn, I not what men him callc. 

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also, 285 

That unto logik hadde longe i-go. 
Al lene was his hors as is a rake, 
And he was not right fat, I undertake; 
But lokede holwe, and therto soberly. 
Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy, 290 



281. So steadily did he conduct his business. 

282. Chevysaunce. — Arrangements for borrowing or contracts. O.Fr. 

chevir, to settle a bargain; the word survives in Fr. achever, to 
finish a matter, and in our achieve. 

283. Sot/ie = truly. 

284. Soth to sayn — to tell the truth. 

285. Clerk. — A university man or man of learning ; L. clerictis, a name 

early given to those engaged in the ministry of the Christian 
church; from Gr. kleros, (1) a lot; (2) an allotment as of con- 
quered land, a portion or share of an inheritance, probably be- 
cause ministers are specially set apart for sacred duties. Bengel, 
Gnomon N.T., traces the appropriation of the name by ministers 
thus : ' ' kleros, a lot, thence a portion of the church which it 
devolves on the presbyter to feed, thence the pastoral office, 
thence the pastors, thence other learned men. What an 
extension and yet a degradation of the idea." By another 
degradation of meaning clerk has come to signify, from a 
scholar, one who can write, and now one who lives by writing 
in an office. But clergymen of the Church of England are 
officially styled clerks or clerks in orders ; the title Reverend 
being merely a modern term of courtesy, generally assumed only 
since the early part of the last century, but previously appHed 
to judges and others. 

Oxenford.— Oy^iovdi. The name has really nothing to do with 
oxen, but contains the old Keltic word for water, seen in the river 
names Usk, Esk, and Ouse, and in Whiskey, a corruption of 
Usquehangh, i.e. strong water. 

286. Had long addicted himself to the study. 

289, ifo^ti'e.— Hollow. 

Theito.—A\so. 

290. Overeste — uppermost. 



64 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

For he hadde geten him yit no benefice, 

Ne was so worldly for to have office. 
I For him was levere have at his beddes heede 
vTwenty bookgs, i-clad in blak and reede, 

Of Aristotel, and his philosophic, 295 

Then robes riche, or fithel or gay saw trie. 

But al be that he were a philosophre, 

Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ; 

But al that he mighte of his frendes hente, 

On bookes and on lernyng he it spente, 30.0 

And busily gan for the soules preye 

Of hem that ^af him wherwith to scoley. 

Coiirtepy. — From Dutch Jcort, shoxi;, and pye, cloak, the latter 
word surviving in our joea-jacket. 

292. Office = secular calling, in contrast to leneficem the preceding line. 

The professions of medicine and law were almost monopolized by 
the clergy in the middle ages, as were secretaryships and offices 
requiring scholarship. Chancellors and high justiciaries as well 
as physicians were generally clergy, though they were forbidden 
to plead in the secular courts by Henry III. Cardinal Wolsey, 
lord high-chancellor, and Thomas Linacre, first president of 
the College of Physicians under Henry VIII., were the last of 
these secular ecclesiastics. 

293. Levere — more to his liking, Ger. lieber; comp, " I had as leef." 

294. So the Camb. MS., others read clad, leaving the verse defective. 
296. Filhel. — A fiddle. L. fidis, Mid. L. Jidula or vitu la, whence our 

word fiddle, and the Italian viola, &c. 

Saivtrie. — Psaltery. A sort of harp. 
299. Miglite of his frendes hente. — This is the reading of most of the MSS., 
and appears to be the right one. The MS, Harl. reads, might gett 
and his frendes sende. 

Henfe.— Get, obtain. 

301. Gan preye = began to pray; the inf. 

302. To scoley ~ to study. Poor students at the universities here and 

on the Continent used to beg for their maintenance. In an old 
MS. poem in the Lansdowne Collection the husbandman, com- 
plaining of the impositions of the clergy and other burdens, 
adds — 

" Than commeth clerkys of Oxford, and make their mone, 
To her scole-hire they most have money." 
Luther himself begged when a student. 



PROLOGUE. 65 

Of stiidie tooke lie most cure and most heedg. 
Not 00 word spak he nior(5 than was needfe ; 
And that was seid in forme and reverence, 305 

And schort and quyk, and ful of heye sentence. 
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, 
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly techS. 
A Sergeant of the Lawe, war and wy§, 
That often haddc ben atte parvj?^, 310 

Ther was also, ful riche of excellence. 
Discret he was, and of gret reverenc8 : 
He semed such, his wordes weren so wisg, 
Justice he was ful often in assist, 

By patente, and by pleyn commissioun; 315 

For his science, and for his heih renoun, 
Of fees and robus had he many oon. 
So gret a purchasour was nowher noon. 

303. G^ire rrcare. 

306. Heye sentence — lofty sentiment. 

370, Sowmjnge in — tending to. A different word from that in line 275. 

309. Sergeant of the Lawe. — From the old Latin term servie7is ad leijem, 

serving the king at law. There was formerly one such officer of 

the crown in each county. 

War = wary, the -ware in beware. 

309. Camb. MS. reads, hothe war, Harl. and Heng. omit the. 

310. Atte parvys. — At the church porch of Old St. Paul's, where lawyers 

met for consultation. 

314. Under the Saxon kings justice was administered in the shire and 
the hundred motes or courts as well as by single hlafords (lords 
or justices), and the Witenagemot combined higher judicial with 
legislative functions. After the Conquest the local judicial system 
was retained, the local Courts Baron succeeding to those of the 
Hlafords, and the Aula Regia or king's court to the Witenage- 
mot, but to relieve the strain on the king's court Henry I. 
began the practice of deputing the powers of that court to 
justices in itinere or in eyre (on circuit), who were sent into the 
provinces as delegates of the Aula Regia, and empowered not 
merely as the judges now to try btit to decide cases. Their 
appointments, at first pro tempore, became afterwards for life. 

316. Science — knowledge. 

318. Purchasour — prosecutor. Fr. jjoxirchasser, It. procacciare, to 
chase, hunt after. 
(59) * E 



66 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Al was fee symple to him in effecte, 

His purchasyng mighte nought ben enfectS. 320 

/ Nowher so besj a man as he ther nas, 
i^J^nd yit he semede besier than he was. 

In termes hadde he caas and domes alle, 

That fro the tyme of kyng William were falle. 

Therto he couthe endite, and make a thing, 325 

Ther couthe no wight pynche at his writyng. 

And every statute couthe he pleyn by roote. 

He rood but hoonily in a medle coote, ' 

Girt with a seynt of silk, with barres smale ; 

Of his array telle I no lenger tale. 330 



319. Fee symple in effecte. — Fee simple is said of lands and tenements 

held by perpetual right. He means that his success in prosecu- 
tion was practically certain. 

320. Enfede. — Suspected of corruption, literally tainted, infected. 

323. Caas and domes.— Cases and dooms, i.e. precedents and decisions. 

324. Were falle — that had occurred, i.e. been tried since the time of 

the Conqueror. 

325. He excelled alike in pleading and in the conduct of business or 

di'awing out of deeds. Thing had formerly a more presentive 
force than now. In line 276 Earle considers " for eny thinge" to 
mean at any cost, price, or conditions. In German hedingiuuj 
means stipulation, contract; in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, 
ting and thing are used of judicial and deliberative assemblies. 
The Norwegian parliament is star ting, or the great thing ; and 
our hustings was originally a house for public political meetings, 
or such a meeting held in a house. Compare with this line 
of Chaucer's Ps. xlv. 1, "My heart is inditing a good matter: 
I speak of the things which I have made touching the king." 

326. Pynche at — find fault with, cavil with. 

327. Pleyn by roote. — See note on line 236. There we have the literal, 

here the figurative expression of which our " say by rote " is the 
representative. 

328. Medle. — A coat of mixed stuff and colour. 

329. Gii't tvith a seynt. — Girt with a belt. Fr. ceinct, L. cinctus, our 

cinctnre. 

Barres. — Ornaments of a girdle originally in the form of trans- 
verse bars with holes for the tongue of the buckle, but after- 
wards of various fanciful designs, as lion's head, &c. 



PROLOGUE. 67 

A Frankeleyn was in his companye ; 

Whit was his berde, as is the daycsye. 

Of his complexioun he was sangwyn. 

W'el loved he by the morwe a sop in wyn. 
/To lyven in delite was al liis wone, 335 

i^JFor he was Epicurus owne sone, 

That heeld opynyoun that pleyn delyt 

Was verraily feHcite perfyt. 

An househaldere, and that a gret, was he ; 

Seynt Julian he was in his countr6. 340 

His breed, his ale, was alway after oon; 

A bettre envyned man was nowher noon. 

Withoutu bakS mete was nevere his hous, 

Of fleisscli and fissch, and that so plentyuous, 

Hit snewed in his hous of mete and drynkg, 345 

Of alls deyntees that men cowde thynke. 

After the sondry sesouns of the 3/eer, 

So chaungfed he his mete and his soper. 



331. Frankeleyn.— K freehold landed pi'oprietor, a descendant of those 
Saxon thanes who, acquiescing in the Conquest, were left in 
possession of their lands, though with new feudal obligations. 

334. By the morice = early in the morning. Cf. our to-morrow, on the 

morrow, with the German morgen, noun and adverb. 

335. Delite — luxury. O.Fr. delit, debit, from L. delectare, to delight. 

The gh has no right to a place in delight. 
Wone = pleasure. Ger. wnnne. 
337. Pleyn delyt.— Full, or the height, of luxury. 

340. Seyyit Julian. — The patron of hospitality. 

341. Breed = bread. 

After oon — of one quality, i.e., whether his guests were high 
or low. 

342. Envyned (O.Fr. envine) = stored with wine. 

343. Bake for haken, the old pp. of bake. 

346. Hit snewed. — It abounded, to sneice or S7iive is still used in this 

sense in some parts of the country. 

347. After = according to. 

348. Mete and soper = food and drink. Snpper, akin to soup, sop, and 

sij), so called because that meal was composed chiefly of liquids. 



68 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewg, 

And many a brem and many a hice in stewe. 350 

Woo was his cook, but-if his sauce were 

Poynaimt and scharp, and redy al his gere. 

His table dormant in his halle alway 

Stood redy covered al the longe day. 

At sessiouns ther was he lord and sire. 355 

Ful ofte tyme he was knight of the schire. 

An anlas and a gipser al of silk 

Heng at his gerdel, whit as morne mylk. 

A schirreve hadde he ben, and a countour ; 

Was nowher such a worthi vavasour. 360 

An Haberdasshere and a Carpenter, 
A Webb^, a Deyere, and a Tapicer, 

349. Mewe. — Originally a place where hawks were kept while moulting ; 

then a coop where fowls were fattened ; and lastly, any place of 
confinement or concealment. 

350. Liice = a pike. Fr. luce, Lat. lucius, a pike. 

Stewe. — A fishpond, an important appendage to a house in Roman 
Catholic times, when religion required abstinence from other 
animal food on so many days in the year. The moats of castles 
were often well stored with fish. 

351. Woo. — Adj. woeful; Uit-if, unless. 

352. Poynauni. — Piquant. 

353. Table dormant. — The early tables were merely boards on trestles : 

tables dormant or permanently fixed to their legs were introduced 

about this time, and standing in the hall were looked on as 

evidences of open hospitality. 
355. Sessiouns. — The county courts. 
357. Anlas or anlace, a knife ; and gipser, a pouch used in hawking or 

worn by gentlemen in ci\ il attire. 

359. Schirreve — shire reve, sheriff. 

Countour. — O.Fr. comptonr, auditor of accounts or treasurer, 

360. Vavasour. — A subvassal, one who held, as did most of the old 

English freeholders, under a tenant of the king. A middle class 
of landholders. - 

361. Halerdasshere. — A dealer in small articles,hats, buttons, silks, &c. &c. 

Probably from O.Fr. haber d'achetz, avoir d'aclieter, to keep on sale. 

362. Webhe. — Webber, now weaver. (jQv.weber. Properly ?feJs^er is the fern. 

Tapicer. — A dealer in rugs, &c. Fr. tapis, a carpet, from L, 
tapete, a carpet, tapestry. 



PROLOGUE. 69 

And they were clothed alle in oo lyver6, 

Of a solenij)ne and gret fraternity. 

Ful freissh and newe here gere apik^d was; 365 

Here kuyfcs were i-chap6d nat with bras, 

But al witli silver wrought ful clene and wel, 

Here gurdles aiid here pouches every del. 

Wel senied eche of hem a fair burgeys, 

To sitten in a ^eldehalle on the deys. 370 



363. Lyvere — livery. The dress worn by servants and members of 
guilds. It means anything, whether clothing or food, delivered 
by a superior to his dependants. A man-servant's livery is not 
his own, but lent to him by his master ; a livery stable is one 
where the fodder is served out from a common store. A baron 
was said to have livery of his manors and feudal holdings, that 
is, to have them formally delivered to him by the king on his 
making proof of age, legitimacy, &c. 

Distinctive badges, called liveries, in the form of hats, scarves, 
hoods, and so on, were adopted not only by the retainers but by 
the entire faction and supporters of the turbulent barons in their 
private quarrels, a practice forbidden by several statutes in the 
reigns of Edward III., Eichard II., and Henry IV., which per- 
mitted their use only by bond fide servants and the members of 
trade guilds, to one of which these citizens belonged. "^ 
solemjme (see note on hne 274) and gret fraieruite." 

365. Here gere apU-ed ?ras. — Their dress, or rather their accoutrements as 

one might say, were cleaned and polished. " Purgatus = pykyd 
or purgyd fro fiilthe and other tkynges grevoics." Prompt. Parvul. 

366. I-chaped. — With chapes or plates of metal ; theii's were not brass 

but silver, they were therefore not petty tradesmen or artisans, 
to whom the use of the precious metals and jewels was forbidden. 

368. Bel — part or portion. Of. dole. 

370. To sit on a dais in a guildhall. — The etymology of the French dais 
or dels is doubtful. It seems originally to have meant a canopy 
over a state seat or table, then the seat or table itself, and lastly 
the raised platform on which the tabJe stood. Cotgrave defines 
" dais or duiz, a cloth of estate, canopy or heaven, over the heads 
of princes' thrones ; also the whole state or seat of estate ; " and 
Matthew Paris, De Vit. Ahhat. St. Albani, says that the newly 
elected abbot dined alone in the refectory, the prior dining at 
the great table which we commonly call the dais. 



70 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Everych man for the wisdom that he can, 

Was schaply for to ben an alderman. 

For catel hadde they inongh and rente, 

And eek here wyfes wolde it wel assente ; 

And elles certeyn hadde thei ben to blame. 375 

It is fill fair for to be clept madame, 

And for to gon to vigilies byfore, 

And han a mantel riallyche i-bore. 

A Cook thei hadde with hem for the nones, 

To boylle chiknes with the mary bones, 380 

And poudre-marchaiint tart, and galyngale. 

Wel cowde he knowe a drau^t of Ijondone ale. 
/ He cowde roste, sethe, broille, and frie, 
(^JVIaken mortreux, and wel bake a pye. 

371. That he can. —That lie knows. 

3/2. Schaply. — Shapely, fit morally or materially. 

373. Catel and rente. — Pi'operty and income qualifying them for the 
office. Chattels and cattle are from the O.Fr. chatel or catel, 
movable property, and this from the Mid. L. catallum, capiale 
or {negotium) capitale, whence also our capital. The L. capiale 
was later used of cattle. 

377. On the eves of festivals, or vigils, the people used to meet in the 

churchyard for drinking and revelry, accompanied by their wives, 
the richer women having their best maiitles carried by servants 
as well for show as for protection, if needed, against the weather. 

37 8. jR iallijche = royally. 

379. For the nones. — For the nonce, for that once. The n belongs to 

the def. pronoun, of which it is an old dative sign. 

380. Mary hones. — Marrov;--bones, 

381. Potidre-marchaunt tart — a, tart or acid flavouring powder. 

Galyngale. — The aromatic and astringent root of the Cyperiis 
longus, a kind of sedge found, though now rarely, in the south of 
England . The genus is abundantly represented in warmer climates. 

382. London ale was at that time held in high esteem, as Burton is now. 

The earliest mention of the latter that I have met is in Kay and 
Willoughby's Itinerary. 
384. Mortreux, mortrewes or mortress. So called from being pounded 
in a mortar. Mortreux de chare, a kind of thick soup of which 
the chief ingredients were fowl, fresh pork, bread crumbs, eggs, 
and saffron; and mortrewes of fysshe, containing the roe or milt 
of fish, bread, pepper, and ale. 



PROLOGUE. 71 

But gret harm was it, as it tliouglite rue, 385 

That on his schyiic a mormal haddc he ; 
For bhinkmaiiger that made he with the bestC. 
A ScHiPMAN was ther, woiiyiig fer by westc: 
For ought I woot, he Wiis of Dertemouthe. 
He rood upon a rouncy, as lie couthe, 390 

In a gowne of faldyug to the kne. 
A dagger hangyng on a laas hadde he 
Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun. 
The hotte somer had maixd his hew al broun ; 
And certeinly he was a good felawe. 395 

Ful many a draught of wyn had he y-drawe 



385. It tJwugJite vie. — Methought, it seemed to me. 

386, Schyne — shin or skin. 

3Iormal=mort mal, a deadly disease, a cancer, or more pro- 
bably an ulcerated leg. 
S87. Blanhnanger = blanc mange, white food, a compound of minced 
chicken, eggs, flour, sugar, and milk, that he could make with (or 
against) the best (of his fellow-cooks). 

388. Wonyng. — Living or dwelliug. A.S. v:nnian, Ger. ^volinen, to 
dwell. A loss to our language. 

By weste. — In the west, westward. 

389. Dertemouthe.— To be pronounced Dartymouth, so Derby is Darby. 

390. Rouncy. — Fr. roncin, a heavy road or cart horse. As he couthe. — As 

well as he could. With fewer conveniences of travelling, riding 
was a more general accomplishment than it is now among lands- 
men, but Chaucer cannot resist a joke at the expense of the 
sailor. 

391. Faldyng. — A coarse rough napped cloth made in Northern Europe. 

392. Laas. — O.Fr. laz or lacqs (L. laqueus), a lace or strap. Cf. aulas, 

line 357. 

394. Perhaps an allusion to the unusually hot summer of 1351. 

lleiv, now hue, originally meant form but afterwards was 
limited to colour. 

395. Goodfelaice. — A jovial companion. 

396-400. Many a cask of wine had he stolen by night from Bordeaux, 
though not always without meeting resistance. 

Chapman. — The merchant (Ger. kaafmann) to whom the wine 
belonged. O.H.G. chavfan, M.H.G. kaufen, O.N. kaupan, A.S. 
ceapian = to buy or barter ; chaffer, to make a bargain ; chop, in 
*' chop and change ;" and cheap, are all from the same root. 



72 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

From Burden X- ward, whil that the chapman sleep. 
Of nyce conscience took he no keep. 
If that he foughte, and hadde the heiher hand, 
By water he sente hem hoom to every land. 400 

But of his craft to rekne wel his tydSs, 
His stremes and his daungers'him bisides. 
His herbergh and his mone, his lodemenage, 
Ther was non such from HuUe to Cartagg. 
Hardy he was, and wys to undertake ; 405 

.With many a tempest hadde his herd ben schake. 
He knew wel alle the havenes, as thei were, 
From Gootlond to the cape of Fynystere, 

401. There was none of his craft besides him between Hull and 
Cartagena in Spain who could so well reckon on, or was so well 
acquainted with the details of seamanship. The his before tydes 
seems to refer to craft, in other words to mean its. 

403. ^er&er(//^.— Harbour. The primary idea contained in this word 
is that of accommodation, and it is only in English that it is used 
of a port or haven for ships. In every other language it means 
a lodging or inn for travellers. The It. albergo, Sp. alhergue, 
and the O.Fr. herherge are from the Low L. herehergium; but this 
has no origin from the classic language, and was like many 
other words borrowed from the German mercenaries in Eome, 
or the Gothic conquerors of the later empire. Her is an army, 
hergen is to shelter or hide. In Dr. Kremsier's Urteutsche 
Sprache, herebirga is defined as heerlager — a camp, and herberga 
or alberga as inquartirung, gastung = quarters or inn. Our 
English verb to harbour retains the original sense of to afford 
lodging. The French havre, from the same root as our haven, 
is a different word. Havan in O.H.G. — a pot or vessel of any 
kind. 

Hone. — The moons as affecting the tides, 

Lodemenage. — Art of steering or piloting his ship into port; 
lode — to lead or guide, as in ^oc^^star the pole-star, and Zoc^estone 
the magnet. Lode manage occurs in statute 3 Geo. I. c. xiii., 
by which courts of lode manage are to be held at Dover for the 
appointment of the Cinque Port pilots. Menage or manage, 
through the French from L. manus, a hand = handling. 

406. Berd - beard. 

408. Gootlond. — Jutland (j pronounced as y), or Gothland in Sweden, 
chief town Gottenburg. 



PROLOGUE. 73 

And every cryk in Bretayne and in Spayng ; 

His barge y-clcped was the Maudelayne. 410 

Ther was witli us a Doctour of Phisik, 
In al this world ne was ther non him lyk 
To speke of phisik and of surgerye ; 
For he was grounded in astrononiye. 
He kepte his pacient wonderly wel 415 

In hourSs by his magik naturel. 
Wel cowde he fortunen the ascendant 
Of his ymkges for his pacient. 
He knew the cause of every maladye, 
Were it of cold, or hoot, or nioyste, or drye, 420 



409, Cri/ A:— Creek, harbour. 

410. Bar(jc. — We should now say harque or harh for a sea-going ship, 

and harye for a river boat of burden or state. The words are 
the same. 

413. Phisik — From Gr. pJn/sis, nature, means properly the study of 

the laws of nature; and of late what was during the ascendency of 
the Baconian philosophy known as natural philosophy has been 
more correctly styled physics. The name of physician, however, 
is deserving of being retained, implying as it does that he should 
be a student of nature, a man of science in the •widest sense. 

Siirgeri/e. — Formerly chirnrgie (from Gr. cheir, a hand, and 
ergon, work), the manual and mechanical part of the healing art. 

414. Astronomiie. — Or rather astrologji, which in the dark ages consti- 

tuted an important part of the popular medicine. 
416-418 Magik naturel. — Chaucer alludes to tiiis practice in his House 
of Fame, U. 169-180:— 

" Ther saugh I pleyen jugclours 



And clerkes eek, which konne wel 
Alle this magike naturel, 
That craftely doon her ententes 
To niaken in certeyn ascemlentes 
Ymages, lo! thriigh which magike 
To make a man ben hool or syke." 



417. Fortunen is here a verb. Ascendent — the sign of the zodiac 

under which one was born. 
420. The four humours or states, to one or other of which all diseases 

were referred. 



74 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

And where engendred, and of what humour; 

He was a verrey par%t practisour. 

The cause i-knowe, and of his harm the rootS, 

Anon he ^af the syke man his boote. 

Ful redy hadde he his apotecaries, 425 

To sende him dragges, and his letukries, 

For eche of hem made other for to wynne ; 

Here friendschipe nas not newe to begynne. 

Wei knew he the olde Esculapius, 

And Deiscorides, and eeke Rufus ; 430 

Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galien ; 

Serapyon, Razis, and Avycen; 

Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn ; 

Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn. 

424. Boote. — Remedy, Cf. : "what hoots it?" i.e. what advantageth it? 

425. Apotecaries. — Apothecary, from Gr. apothele a storehouse, is liter- 

ally a sloreJceeper, though by custom applied only to a retailer of 
drugs, in classic Greek pharmakopoles. 

426. Dragges. — Now spelled drugs. Cotgrave explains the French 

dragie as dragge, a warm digestive powder used by persons of 
weak stomachs after food, and hence comfits or aromatic pre- 
serves taken at the end of a meal. Though the word is found in 
all Romance languages, and is unknown in German, H. Tooke 
derives it from A.S., &c., drugan, to dry, as if it meant dried 
herbs, roots, or juices, and adduces the phrase "A drug in the 
mai-ket," understanding it to mean something dried up and 
spoilt. 

Letuaries. — It. lettuario, electuary, commonly derived from 
electus^ as if made of choice or selected ingredients. Since the word 
is now at least applied to medicines made in the form of a paste or 
jam, Holland would propose as the etymology, Gr. ekleigma, 
something to be licked, thus making it equivalent to our litictus, 
a thick medicated syrup, 

427. The doctor and the apothecaries mutually recommended and helped 

one another, a practice now expressly forbidden to members of 
the London College of Physicians. 
429-434. — The writers here mentioned were the chief medical authorities 
in the middle ages, with the exception of JEsculapius, the reputed 
founder and patron divinity of the medical art, though, according 
to Homer, he was simply the " blameless physician," whose sons 
Machaon and Podalirius practised with the Grecian army before 



PROLOGUE. 75 

Of his diets mesurable was he, 435 

For it was of no superMuite, 

But of gret iiorisching and digestible. 

His studie was but litel on the Bible. 



Troy. His descendants formed a caste of priestly physicians 
under the name of Asclepiadtc, who transmitted the secrets of 
their art orally, Chaucer is in error in supposing that any 
works attributed to him were extant. 

Dioscorides, a physician and botanist, born at Anazarba in 
Cilicia in the first century of the Christian era. He wrote on 
materia medka, taking nearly all his remedies from the vegetable 
kingdom. 

Rvfus, a celebrated anatomist who lived at Ephesus in the 
reign of Trajan, who discovered the cerebral nerves, and wrote 
on the structure of the eye and kidney. 

Hippocrates (Ypocras as he was called by mediaeval writers), 
the most eminent, and deservedly so, of Greek physicians, born 
at Cos, and died at Larissa in Thessaly, B.C. 3G1, in his ninety- 
ninth year. His works which are still extant show extraordinary 
powers of observation and good sense. 

AviceiDia or Ebn Sina, an Arabian physician and commentator 
on Aristotle, lived in the eleventh century, as did his countrymen 
Haly (Alhazen) the astronomer, and Serapion. 

Galen, whose reputation was second only to that of Hippocrates, 
was born in Pergamus, a.d. 131. After studying in Egypt he 
practised first in his native city and then in Rome, but being 
driven thence by the jealousy of his less successful rivals returned 
to Pergamus until recalled by special mandate of the Emperor 
Aurelius, to whose son Commodus he was appointed medical 
attendant. Five folio volumes of his works are preserved, but 
even that is but a small portion of his writings. 

Rhiizcs or Allubecar Mohammed, born at Khorassan about 
A.D. 850, was chief of the hospital at Bagdad, and the first to 
give a distinct account of the smallpox which appeared in Egypt 
in the reign of the Caliph Omar. 

Averroes or Aven Rosh, an Arabian philosopher and physician 
of the twelfth century, wrote among other works a paraphrase 
of Plato's Republic. His talents led to his appointment as 
governor of Morocco by the Caliph Jacob Almanzor, but he 
suffered much persecution on account of supposed heretical 
opinions. 

John of Gaddesden, physician to Edward III., the first English- 



7.6 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

In sangwin and in pers he clad was al, 

Lyned with taflfata and with sendal. 440 

And ;/it he was but esy of dispence ; 

He kepte that he wan in pestilence. 

(For gold in phisik is a cordial; 
Therfore he lovede gold in special. 

A good WiF was ther or byside Bathe, 445 

But sche was somdel deef, and that was skathe. 
Of cloth-makyng sche hadde such a haunt, 
Sche passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt. 

man who held the position of royal physician. His work on 
medicine, entitled Rosa A nglica, is full of absurdities, and shows 
how low the art had sunk since it fell into the hands of the 
clergy. 

Bernardius Gordonius, professor of medicine at Montpellier, 
was also Chaucer's contemporary. 

Constantius Afer, a native of Carthage, and afterwards a monk 
of Monte Cassino, was one of the founders of the celebrated 
school at Salerno, the first regular medical college in Europe. 

Johannes Damascemcs was an Arabian physician of the ninth (?) 
century, and Gilbertjjn is supposed by Warton to be the famous 
Gilbertus Angiicus. 

439. Sangivin and pers. — Biood red and peach (blossom) colour. Peach, 

Fr. pecher, It. pesca, L. malum persicum = Persian apple. (Pliny, 
N. H. xii. 9.) 

440. Taffata.—K thin silk. 

Sendal. — A rich thin silk (or according to Palsgrave a fine 
linen) used for lining. 

441. Esy of dispence.— Mo^ersiiQ in his expenditure. 

442. Acquired during the late pestilence of 1348-49. 

445. Wif, like the Ger. tveih, means a married woman. The word is 
used rather in opposition to a maid than as correlative of husband. 
Byside — near. 
446 Somdel. — Some deal, somewhat, 

/S^a^/ie = misfortune. A.S. sceatlian, Goth, shathjan, Ger. 
schaden, to injure. We retain the word in scathing and unscathed. 
The Germans use schade as we do pity, in " What a pity!" 

447. The west of England was early celebrated for its cloth, and still 

retains a high reputation for the excellence of its broad cloths. 
Haunt here means skill, practice. 

448. Ypres and Gaunt (Ghent). — The great seats of the Flemish cloth 

works. 



PROLOGUE. 77 

In al the parisshe wyf ne was ther noon 
That to the offiyng byforn hire schiikle goon, 450 

And if ther ditle, certeyn so wroth was sche, 
That sclie was thannc out of alle charite. 
Hire keverchefs f nl fyne weren of grounds ; 
I durste swere they weyyeden ten poundg 
That on the Sonday were upon hire heed. 455 

Hire hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed, 
Ful streyte y-teyed, and schoos ful moyste and newS. 
/Bold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewg."^ 

450. When the parishioners on Rehc Sunday went to the altar to kiss 
the relics, 

Schulde.— Might presume to. 

453. Keverchefs; couvre chef. — Kerchief, covering for the head, like the 
Sp. mantilla, an essential part of female attire, and on the decor- 
ation cf which much care was bestowed. From some illuminations 
of the period the head-gear seems to have been padded. In a 
satire on the follies of the ladies of the Elizabethan age, entitled 
The Anatomy of Abuses, 1585, we read "They have also other 
ornamentes besides these to furuishe forthe their ingenious 
heades, to the ende, as I think, that the clothe of golde, clothe of 
silver, or els tinsell (for that is the woi'st wherewith their heads 
are attired withall underneath their caules) may the better 
appear and shew itselfe in the bravest maner, so that a man 
that seeth them (their heades glister and shine in such sorte) 
would thinke them to have golden heades. . . . Then have 
they petticoates of the beste clothe than can be made. And 
sometimes they have clothe neither, for that is thought too 
base, but of scarlet, grograine, taffatie, silke, and such like, 
fringed about the skirtes, with silke fringe of changeable colour. 
But which is more vayne, of whatsoever their petticoates be, yet 
must they have kirtles (for so they call them) either of silke, 
velvett, grograine, taffatie, satten or scarlet, bordered with 
gardes, lace fringes, and I cannot tell what besides. Their nether- 
stockes in like maner are either of silke, iearnaey, worsted, 
crewel], or, at least, of as fine yearne thread or clothe as is possible 
to be hadde ; yea they are not ashamed to weare hoase all kinds 
of changeable coloui-s as ^een, red, white, russet, tawny, and 
elswhat." 

457. Moyste — supple leather. 



78 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Sche was a worthy wommaii al hire lyfe, 

HousbondSs atte chirche dore hadde sche fyfe, 460 

Withouten other companye in youthe ; 

But therof needeth nou^ to speke as nouthe. 

And thries hadde sche ben at Jerusalem ; 

Sche hadde passed many a straunge streem ; 

At Kome sche hadde ben, and at Boloyne, 465 

In Galice at seynt Jame, and at Coloyne. 

Sche cowde moche of wandryng by the weye. 

Gat-tothed was sche, sothly for to seye. 

Uppon an amblere esely sche sat, 

Y-wympled wel, and on hire heed an hat 470 

As brood as is a bocler or a targe ; 

A foot-mantel aboute hire hipes large, 

459. Worthy does not imply moral worth, but means of a jovial easy 

disposition. 

460, Marriages were celebrated at the church porch, as baptisms are 

properly now, whence the newly married couple proceeded to 
the altar, to communicate at the mass. 

Fyfe husbands; suggested by the story of the woman of 
Samaria. 
462. As nouthe — at present, nouthe — now then. 

464. Straunge streem — foreign river. 

465. Boloyne — Bologna, where was a famous image of the Virgin. 

466. In Galice at seynt Jame. — At the shrine of St. James of Compostella 

in Galicia, whither the body of the apostle was believed to have 
been carried in a ship without a rudder, 

Coloyne. — Cologne or Koln, where the bones of the three wise 
men, or, as the Roman Church calls them, the three kings, Gaspar, 
Melchior, and Balthazar, who came from the East to see the 
infant Jesus, are believed to be preserved. 

468. Oat-tothed. — This word has been variously spelled and explained 

as gap-, cat-, gat- (goat-) toothed, &c., and as meaning with spaces 
between the teeth, prominent toothed or with the lower jaw 
projecting, also lascivious. At any rate it refers to something con- 
spicuous and unsightly in the arrangement of the teeth. 

469. Amblere. — A quiet-going horse. 

470. Y-wympled. — Having a wimpel or covering for the neck. O.G. 

wimpelen, to cover, Fr. guimple. [Gu in French indicates deriv- 
ation from a Teutonic io, as ^^'ar, guerre.] 
472. Foot-mantel. — Probably a riding petticoat. 



PROLOGUE. 79 

And on hire feet a paire of spores scharpt5. 

In felawescliipe wel eowde sclie lawghc and carpe. 

Of remedyes of love sche knew parohaunce, 475 

For of that art sche couthe the olde dauncC. 

A good man was ther of religioun, 
And was a poure Persoun of a toiin ; 
But riche he was of holy thought and werk. 
He was also a lerned man, a clerk 48G; 

That Cristes gospel truly wolde prechg ; 
His parischens devoutly wolde he teche. 
Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 
And in adversite ful pacient; 

And such he was i-proved oftg sithgs. 485 

Ful loth were him to curse for his tythes; 
But rather wolde he ^even out of dowte, 
Unto his poure parisschens aboute, 

473. Spores = spurs. 

474. Carpe now means to find fault with, but in old writers to jest or 

chaff. It comes from a monkish use of the L, carpere; like the 
double meaning of our word tease, to tease wool, and to tease a 
person. 

475. Remedyes of love. — Drugs and charms supposed to have the power of 

exciting or damping the passion. Ovid wrote a book on the subject, 

476. The olde daunce. — The old game. 

477. So in French, persons, male or female, belonging to the clergy or 

monastic orders are called "Religious." 

478. Persoun of a toun — a parish priest. Parson — L. persona ecclesice 

(person of the church). " He is called parson {persona) because 
by his person the church, which is an invisible body, is repre- 
sented." — Blac/csione. Impersonare — to institute to a living. 
480. See for clerh note on line 285. 

482. Pansc/teTis.— Parishioners. Parish, Fr. paroisse, L. 2)arochia, G. 

paroikla (fz'om para near, and oikos, house), the district around 
the house of the minister. 

483. Wonder — wonderly, wonderfully. 

485. Bithes — since. A.S. sith = time, pi. sithan. Cf. Ger. zeit = time, 

and seit = since. 
48^ Loth is an adjective. It was odious to him to excommunicate .such 

as failed to pay the tithes. 
487. Out of dowte — doubtless. 



80 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Of his offrynge, and eek of his substauncg. 
He cowde in litel thing han suffisance. 490 

Wyd was his par^sch, and houses fer asonder, 
But he ne lafte not for reyne ne thonder, 
In siknesse nor in meschief to visite 
The ferrest in his parissche, moche and hte, 
Uppon his feet, and in his hond a staf. 495 

/^This noble ensample to his scheep he g?d, 
VThat ferst he wroughte, and afterward he taughtg, 
Out of the gospel he tho wordes caiighte, 
And this figure he addede eek therto, 
That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo? 500 

For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste, 
No wonder is a lewed man to ruste ; 
And schame it is if that a prest take kepe, 
A [foule] schepperd and a clene schepe ; 
Wei oughte a prest ensample for to give, 505 

By his clennesse, how that his scheep schulde lyve. 



489. Offrynge. — The voluntary contributions of his parishioners. 

Siibstaunce. — The income of his living. 

490. He found sufficient for his simple wants in a small competence. 

492. Ne lafte not. — Did not leave them or neglect to visit them. 

493. Mescliief. — Misfortune. There was an old word honchief, correlative 

to this. 

494. Moclie and lite = great and small. 

495. Uppon his feet. — Unlike the monk. 

502. Lewed man. — A layman. Leii-d — lay (A.S. Icewed, from a verb 
meaning to weaken), as opposed to clerical or ecclesiastical 
{clericus, see on line 285), had not the secondary meaning of 
immoral which it has acquired, in precisely the same way that 
villain has been degraded. The word lay, L. laicus, Gr. Icuos = 
the people, though synonymous with leived in old, and having 
superseded it in modern English, is of a quite distinct origin, 
and is used by the members of each learned profession of the 
peoiAe outside. 

603. Tahe l-epe. — Guard or take care. 

504. St. Chrysostom said, " It is a great shame for priests when laymen 
be found faithfuller and more righteous than they." See Bacon's 
Invective against Swearing. 



G 



TROLOGUE. 81 

He sett(? not his benefice to hyre, 

And leet his scheep encombied in the myrS, 

And ran to Londone, unto seyntS Poules, 

To seeken him a chaunterie for soult5s, 510 

Or with a bretherhede to ben withholds ; 

But dwelte at hoom, and kepte wel his foklS, 

So that the wolf ne made it not myscarye. 

He was a schepperd and no niercenarie; 

And though he holy were, and vertuous, 515 

He was to sinful man nought despitous, 

Ne of his speche daungerous ne digne, 

But in his teehing discret and benigne. 

To drawe folk to heven by fairnessg, 

By good ensample, was his busynesse : 520 



607. Did not leave his parish in charge of a deputy while he went in 
search of more lucrative employment. 

510. Chaunterie for soides. — An endowment in cathedral and great 

churches by which a priest was paid for singing masses for souls 
according to the will of the founder. There were thirty-five 
such at St. Paul's Cathedral, served by fifty-four priests. — 
Dugdah. 

511. Withholde. — P. part., maintained. 

516. Desjnfons. — Scornful, contemptuous. 

517. Daungerous ne digne. — Domineering nor dignified or haughty; 

for daunger, see Earle's P/dloIogg of the English Tongtie, § 337; 
also note on line 663 of this poem. In the Prologue to Mehbeus, 
Chaucer says — 

"I wot you telle a little thing in prose, 
That oughte like you, as I suppose. 
Or elles cartes ye be to daungerous." 

In the Merchant of Venice, iv. 1 — 

"You stand within his danger, do you not?" 
plainly means, "You are in his power." 

Daimgers or dangers in old records and statutes are equivalent 
to seigneurial rights, and secondarily escheats and forfeitures. 
It must be derived from DomiuiLf, as Dan in Dan Chaucer, &c. 
Earle compares the almost synonymoiis phrases, "to be in an- 
other's j)o?per " or "at his meraj." 
519. By fairnesse, i.e. by leading a fair or good life. One MS. has 
clenenesse. 
(59) F 



82 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

But it were eny persoiie obstinat, 

What so he were, of high or lowe estat, 

Him wolde he snybbe scharply for the nongs. 

A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. 

He waytede after no pompe ne reverence, 525 

Ne maked him a spiced conscience. 

But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 

He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve. 

With him ther was a Ploughman, was his brother. 
That hadde i-lad of dong ful many a fother. 530 

A trewe swynkere and a good was hee, 
Lyvynge in pees and parfi^t charitee. 
God loved he best with al his hoole herte 
At alle tymes, though him gamede or smerte, 

522. What so = whatsoever, whoever. 

523. Snyhhe = snub. A Norse and Frisian word meaning to cut short. 

Cf. smtb nose, and Prov. Eng. snoup, a blow on the head. 
Fo7' the nones (two syllables). — Promptly, on the spot. 

525. Waytede after. — Sought or looked for. 

526. Spiced conscience. — Over-scrupulous, pharisaical as we should say. 

In a tract dated 1594 we read, "under pretence of spiced 
holiness; " and in Beaumont and Fletcher's Mad Lover, act iii., 
when Cleanthe offers a purse, the priestess says — 

"Fie! no corruption .... 
die. Take it, it is yours ; 

Be not so spiced; it is good gold ; 

And goodness is no gall to the conscience." 

527. Lore — teaching. A.S. Idr, Ger. lehre. 

529. This line illustrates the humble social origin of the secular clergy, 

which enabled them to act as mediators between the peas- 
antry to whom they belonged by ties of blood, and the proud 
nobles over whom they in their spii'itual character possessed 
more or less power 

530. Fother. — A cart-load. A. Sa,x. fother. The term fodder, like Ger. 

fuder, is still used for a weight of lead ; lbs. 19^, 21|, or 22| in 
different parts of England. 

531. Swynl-ere. — Labourer. See line 188. 

534. Though him gamede or smerte. — Whether it gave him pleasure or 
pain, i.e. whether his piety conduced to or conflicted with his 
worldly interests. 

533-535.— Cf. Mark xii. 33. 



PROLOGUE. 83 

And thanne his iieigliebour right as iiimselvC. 535 

/He woldc thressht', and tlierto dyke and delvS, 
(j^or Cristt'S sake, with every poure wight, 
Withouten hyre, if it laye in his might. 
His tythcs payede he ful faire and wel, 
Botha of his own6 swynk and his catel. 540 

In a tabard he rood upon a mere. 

Ther was also a Reeve and a Mellere, 
A Sompnour and a Pardoner also, 
A Mauncipk', and my self, ther were no mo. 

The Mellere was a stout carl for the nones, 545 
Ful big he was of braun, and eek of boongs ; 

536. A7id therto dyke and delve — and also make dykes or ditches and dig. 

Dike is now used only in a special sense, having been ordinarily 
superseded by the softened form ditch. To dig, originally to make 
a dike or ditch, has taken the place of the more general word delve, 
which has almost become obsolete ; the noun ditcher, however, 
is retained for a man whose special work is to make ditches. 

537. Wight.— '^ee on Une 71. 

540. Swynk and catel. — In labour or service rendered, and in kind or 

produce. Catel. — See on line 373. 

541. Tabard. — A smock or short jacket. See on line 20. Mere = a mare. 

542. Heeve. — Steward or baihff . A.S. gerefa, whence sh ire-reeve = sheriff, 

port-reeve, borough-reeve. Cf. Ger. hnrggraf, &c. This reeve was, 
as the account of him proves, merely the bailiff or steward of some 
nobleman. The connection between the Eng. reve and the German 
graf has been questioned, but the forms grave, grefe, gerefe, and 
reve, all occur in Dr. Kremsier's Old High German Dictionary, 
and are explained as beghifer, graf, pra^sea. Mellere = a miller. 

543. Sompnour. — A summoner in the ecclesiastical courts, now called 

apparitor. The explanation of p in this word, as in the French 
compter, to count, is to be found in their Latin originals, suhmoneo 
and computo. In solcmpne, solemn, and nevipne, name, it has 
been introduced through false analogy. 

Pardoner — a seller of indulgences. Indulgences were invented 
in the eleventh century by Pope Urban II., as rewards to those 
who went in person to the Holy Land; but they were afterwards 
sold for money, and the trade reached such a pitch of extrava- 
gance and scandal as to rouse the indignation of Luther, and 
thereby contributed in no small degree to hasten the Reformation. 

644. Maunciple. — Caterer to a college. L. manceps, a contractor. 

545. Carl. — A.S. ceorl, Icel. karl, Ger. kerl, a countryman, then a strong 



84 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

That prevede wel, for overal ther he cam, 

At wrastlynge he wolde here alwey the ram. 

He was schort schuldred, broode, a tliikke knarrg, 

Ther nas no dore that he nolde heve of harre, 550 

Or breke it with a rennyng witli his heed. 

His berd as ony sowe or fox was reed, 

And thereto brood, as though it were a spade. 

Upon the cop right of his nose he hade 

A werte,. and thereon stood a tuft of heres, 555 

Eeede as the berstles of a souwes eeres. 

His nose-thurles blake were and wyde. 

A swerd and bocler baar he by his side. 

hardy fellow, lastly degraded into churl, like the corresponding 
term villain. The proper name Charles, Ger. Carl or Karl, is the 
same word. 

546. Brawn. — Originally, as here, simply muscle, but now used only of a 

particular dish of pork ; the adjective hratony, however, retains 
the primary meaning. 

547. That prevede wel. — Literally, proved well, i.e. served him well. 

Cf. L. multicm valere, Fr. heaiicotip valoir. 

Overal ther. — ^Wherever. Overal, like the Ger. uherall = every- 
where, ther = where. Literall}', everwhere where he came. 

548. The ram. — The usual prize at wrestling-matches. 

549. Knarre. — A thick-set fellow. O.E. gnarr, a knot, retained in the 

expression gnarled, said of an oak or other tree. 

550. Harre. — O.E. herre, A.S. heor, a hinge. 

Nolde. — Past tense of the verb nyllan, the negative of 
willan, as L. nolle, to be unwilling, of velle, to be willing; 
it is now obsolete. J. Wesley is perhaps the latest writer who has 
used the phrase, "whether he will or nill," The meaning of the 
line is, "There was no door that he would not heave off its hinges. 

551. Rennyng. — Running, at a run. 

554. Cop. — Tip or top. Cf. Ger. kopf, head. Coh nuts are the best, or 
as we might say colloquially, ' ' tiptop nuts. " Coping of a wall, cap 
on the head, cohs or large pitcoals, are kindred words. Rich and 
powerful men are called by Udall " the rich cols of this world." 

556. Berstles = bristles, by a common transposing of the letters. In 

German a brush is hurste. 

557. Nose-thurles. — Now corrupted into nostrils. A.S. thirlian, to drill 

or pierce; thirel, a hole. Drill, thrill, through, and even door, are 
all from the same root. 



PROLOGUE. 85 

His mouth as wyde was as a great forneys. 
He was a janglere, and a golyardeys, 560 

And that was most of synne and harlotries. 
We] cowde lie stele corn, and tollen thries ; 
And yet he had a thombe of gold parde. 
A whit cote and a blew hood wered he. 
A baggepipe wel cowde he blowe and sowng, 565 

And therwithal he brought iis out of townS. 
A gentil Mauncipl^ was ther of a temple, 
Of which achktours mighten take exemple 

559. Foi-neys. — Mr. Earle remarks that to Chaucer as a Kentish man 

furnaces were famihar objects, for the ironstone which abounds 
in the weald of Kent and Sussex was largely smelted, until the 
substitution of coal for wood as fuel transferred the industry to 
the Black Country and to Wales. 

560. Janglere ~ a talker, babbler. An Old French word. 

Golyardeys. — A buffoon at rich men's tables. Etymology 
unknown, unless from Golias, the assumed author of the 
Apocalypsts Golioe and other pieces in burlesque Latin rime. 
The authorship has been attributed to one Walter Map. It 
was a popular jest-book of the twelfth century. 

561. That, viz. his talk and jokes. 

562. (S^eZe.— Steal or appropriate part of the corn intrusted to him to 

grind, a practice common in the trade. 

Tollen thries. — Demand payment over again. 

563, — An immense amount of ingenuity has been expended in endeav- 
ours at explaining the proverb, "Every honest miller has a golden 
thumb;" but, "After all, is not the old proverb satirical, infer- 
ring that all millers who have not golden thumbs are rogues — argal, 
as Shakespeare says, that all millers are rogues ? " (Notes and 
Queries, May, 1869, p. 407. Dr. Morris). If not, the most plau- 
sible notion involves an allusion to the advantage derived from a 
highly cultivated sense of touch in judging of the qiiality of meal 
by rubbing it between the fore finger and thumb, which latter 
becoming broad and flattened, has suggested the name of miller 's- 
thumb for a well-known fish whose head has that peculiar form. 
Parde. — Fr, par Dieu, by God. Yet may imply that in spite 
of his roguery he was most prosperous. 

565. Baggepipe. — We are accustomed to look on this instrument as 
pecuHarly Scottish, only because it has been retained longer by 
that people than by others. The eariiest mention of the bagpipe 
in Scotland is an item for the pay of " Inglis pyparis" in the 



86 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

For to be wys in byynge of vitaille. 

For whether that he payde, or took by taille, 570 

Algate he waytede so in his achate, 

That he was ay biforn and in good state. 

Now is not that of God a f ul fair grace, 

That such a lewed mannes wit schal pac§ 

The wisdom of an heep of lernede men? 575 

Of maystres hadde moo than thries ten, 

That were of lawe expert and curious ; 

Of which ther were a doseyn in that hous, 

court of James IV. On a Greek sculpture now at Rome, and of 
great antiquity, is a representation of a man playing on a genuine 
bagpipe, and instruments made on the same principle are still 
used in Calabria and Transylvania. 

Soivne. —Sound, a different word from sownen, to tend or con- 
duce to, occurring in line 307. 

567. A temple. —The Inns of Court, so called, were anciently the residence 

of the Knights Templars. At the suppression of that order their 
buildings were purchased by the professors of common law, and 
divided into the Inner and Middle Temples, in relation to Essex 
House, which, though not appropriated by the lawyers, was 
long known as the Outer Temple. By the expression ' ' a temple," 
he would seem to mean simply any one of the Inns of Court. 

568. Achatour. — A purchaser or caterer. Fr. acheter = to buy. 

570. Tooh hy taille. — Bought on credit or by tally, originally an account 

scored in notches on a piece of wood, from Fr. tailler to cut, 
whence also our word tailor, as Ger. sc/meider, from sch n eiden, to cut. 

571. A Igate = always. Gate and tvay are from Scandinavian and 

German sources respectively. Gata in Swedish and Icelandic 
is way, path, or street. Swagate {i.e. so ways), thus, is found in 
O.E. Our word gait is another form. 

Waytede so in his achate. ■ — Watched or attended to his purchases. 

572. Ay liforn. — Ever before (others). 

573. Cf. James i. 17. 

574. Leaved. — See on 1. 502. Wit. — See on 1. 279. Pace = pass or surpass. 

576. The members of the Temple, 

577. Curious. — Careful, studious, from cura = care. Also inquiring, and 

in a depreciatory sense prying, inquisitive. All these uses are 
found in Latin authors, and in English before the eighteenth 
century. Since that time the last only has been retained, though 
even it is obsolescent ; and the word has most absurdly come to 
signify unusual, remarkable, quaint, or strange. 



PROLOGUE. 87 

Worth i to ben stiwardes of rente and lond 

Of any lord that is in Engelond, 580 

To maken him lyve by his propre good, 

In honour detteles, but-if he were wood, 

Or lyve as scarsly as him list desire ; 

And able for to helpen al a schire 

In any caiis that niighte falle or happe ; 585 

/\A.nd z/it this maunciple sette here aller cappe. 
The Reev£ was a sklendre colerik man, 

His berd was schave as neigli as evere he can. 

His heer was by his eres ful i-ound i-schorn. 

His top was docked lyk a preest biforn. 590 

. Ful longg wein his leggSs, and ful len6, 
(^.Al like a staff, ther was no calf y-sene. 

Wei cowde he kepe a gerner and a bynne; 

Ther was non auditour cowde on him wynne. 

Wei wiste he by the droughte, and by the reyn, 595 

The yeeldyng of his seed, and of his greyn. 



579. Stiwardes. — A steward, or stedeward, is a keeper {warder) of the 
stede or establishment of his lord. 

581. To enable him to Hve on his own private [proper) means. 

582. But-if he loere wood. — Unless he were mad. Oui' word hat = he-out, 

like ex-cept, excluding such a thing or proposition; it is therefore 
not convertible with the Fr. mais — L. magis, preferably, commonly 
though erroneously considered as its equivalent ; the two words 
corresponding only in a certain number of instances. 
Wood. A.S. xcod, mad. W^id is still used in Scotland. 

583. Co-ordinate with line 581, not with ^'hut-if he wei-e wood," which is 

parenthetical. Him refers to the steward: thus if the lord would 
only live as sparingly as it pleased his steward to desire or advise 
him. 

584. Al a = a whole. 

585. Caas. — Event or misfortune. 

586. Here aller cappe — the caps of them (the lawyers) all. To set a 

mail's cap meant to outwit, overreach, or surpass him. He out- 
did them all. 

587. Reeve = a bailiff. 

590. Docked in front (before), like the tonsure of a priest. 
594. Auditour = accountant. 

On him xcynne. — Outmatch him. 



88 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

His lordes scheep, his neet, and liis dayerie, 

His swyn, his hors, his stoor, and his pultrie, 

Was holly in this reeves governynge, 

And by his covenaunt gai the rekenynge, 600 

Syn that his lord was twenti ?/eer of age ; 

Ther couthe noman bringe him in arrerage. 

Ther nas ballif, ne herde, ne other hyne, 

That he ne knew his sleight and his covyne ; 

They were adrad of hirci, as of the dethg. 605 

His wonyng was ful fair upon an hethe, 

With grene trees i-schadwed was his place. 

He cowde bettre than his lord purchace. 

Fill riche he was i-stored prively, 

His lord wel couthe he plese subtilly, 610 

To ^eve and lene him of-his owne good, 

And have a thank, a cote, and eek an hood. 

In youthe he lerned hadde a good mester ; 

He was a wel good wrighte, a carpenter. 

This reeve sat upon a ful good stot, 615 

597. ■N'eet — cattle. Dayerie. (Old E. deye, a female servant) = dairy, the 

woman's department in the farm. 

598. Stoor.— Farm stock. O.Fr. estor, Mid. L. staurum, store. 

599. Holly = wholly. 

602. Arrerage = arrears. 

603. Herde = herdsman. The modem sense of a flock is the original 

one. Hyne = hind, farm -labourer. 

604. Sleight = craft, astuteness, from Icel. sla\gr = sly. Covyne = deceit. 

O.Fr. covin, from L. convemre, to come between or together. 

605. Adrad. — In dread. As afeard = in fear of. 

606. Wonyng. — Dwelling. Ger. wohnung. See line 388. 
609. I-stored. — From stoor, see line 598. 

611. Lene, &c. — Lend to him of his own thrift. 

613. Mester = trade. Fr. metier. Had learned his business well. 

614. Wrighte. — Wright was originally a workman of any kind. Of. 

-wheelwright, cartm^ighi, i>\a,jioright. Akin to the verbal form 
wrought. 

615. Stot. — A stallion, or sometimes a young horse {Bailey''s Dictionary, 

1735). In German, however, siufe is a mare. 

616. Pornely (ponime). — Same as dappled {apple), patched with colour 

like an apple. 



PROLOGUE. 89 

That was a pomely gray, and higlite Scot. 

A long surcote of pers ui)pon he liaddS, 

And by his siile he bar a rusty bladdS. 

Of Northfolk was this reeve of whicli I tellS, 

Byside a toun men callen BaldeswollC. 620 

Tukked he was, as is a frere, about6, 

And ever he rood the hyndreste of the routS. 

A SoMPNOUR w^as ther with us in that place, 
That hadde a fyr-reed cherubynes face, 
For sawceflem he was, with eyghen narwS. 625 

As hoot he was, and leccherous, as a sparwS, 

617. Pers.— See note on line 439. 

Uppon seems here to be used as an adverb : overall, outside. 

620. Byside = near ; not living in the town but in the country near it. 

621. Tukled aboute. — Dressed up, from A.S. tucian, to clothe; O.E. tuck, 

Ger. fiich, cloth. 

622. Hyndreste = hindmost. Cf. overeste, 1. 290. 

Route. — An O.Fr. word, Ger. rotte, a crowd; not the Mod. Fr. 
route, road or course. 

623. Sompnour. — See line 543. 

624. Fyr-reed cherubynes face. — H. Stephens, Apol. Herod, i. cap. 30, 

quotes the same expression from a French epigram : " Nos grands 
docteurs au cherubin visage." Comp. "His face was red as any 
cherubyn:" Thynne (ob. 1611 a.d. ), Debate between Pride and 
Lowlines. Properly the singular is cheruh, the plural chendtim. 

625. Sawceflem (or sa?r,<;/''rt?/;). — Having a red pimpled face. Tyrwhitt in 

his Glossary gives a quotation from the Bodl. MS. 2463 which ex- 
plains the etjTnology of the word. " Unguentum contra salsum 
flegvia, scabiem," &c., that is, an ointment against the salt phlegm, 
scab, &c. So Galen in Hippocrat. Be Aliment. Comment, iii. 
p. 227, plainly points to a skin disease produced by the exces- 
sive use of salt food, so general among our foi*efathers. In 
the Prompt. Parv. we have flew and flewme as equivalents of 
fl^gma. Tyrwhitt quotes the term from an old French physic 
book, and also from the old work A Thousand Notable Things, 
**a sovereign ointment for sausefleme, and all kind of scabies." 

It may be well to remind the student that our word sauce is 
derived through the French from the It. salso, L. salsus, and 
means originally salted or pickled articles of food, and sausage is 
frori> the same. 

Nance = narrow. 



90 THE CANTEEBTJRT TALES. 



/V: 



With skalled browes blake and piled berd; 

his visage children weren aferd. 
Ther nas quyksilver, litarge, ne bremstoon, 
Boras, ceruce, ne oille of tartre noon, 630 

Ne oynement that wolde dense and byte, 
That him might helpen of his whelkes white, 
Ne of the knobbes sittyng on his cheekes. 
Wei loved he garleek, oynouns, and ek leekes, 
And for to drinke strong wyn reed as blood. 635 

Thanne wolde he speke, and crye as he were wood. 
And whan that he wel dronken hadde the wyn. 
Than wolde he speke no word but Latyn. 
A fewe termes hadde he, tuo or thre. 
That he hadde lerned out of som decree; 640 

No wonder is, he herde it al the day. 
And eek ye knowen wel, how that a jay 

627. Skalled. — Having the scall or scales, scurfy. Cf. vulg. "scald 
head." 

Piled. — Bald or bare in patches. Norse ^7«, to pluck, thence 
the Fr. piller, to pillage. Cf. line 177, and note. 

629. Quykdlver. — Quicksilver or mercury = Hving silver, so called from 

its mobility. 

Litarge, or oxide of lead, Gr. lithargyros {lithos, a stone, and 
argyros, silver), silver-stone, from the presence in the ore of a 
certain amount of silver. 

Bremstoon.— Brm\sione\ formerly hrynstan, a Scandinavian 
word meaning burning-stone. 

630. Boras. — Borax, or biborate of soda. From an Arabic word bourach. 

Ceruce. — L. cerussa. White-lead or carbonate of lead. 
Oille of tartre. — Probably cream of tartar, bitartrate of potash, 
Tartar, a fanciful name given by the alchemists to the dregs of 
anything, especially, and afterwards solely, to the crystalline 
deposit of impure bitartrate of potash which, under the name of 
argal or argol, is collected from the hogsheads in which wine has 
been long kept. 

All the above-mentioned substances are or have been used in 
ointments or cosmetics. 
632. WhelJces. — Blotches, scabs. 
636. TFoocZ.— See on line 582. 



TROLOGUE. 91 

Can clepen Watte, as wel as can tlie popS. 

But who so wokle iu other thing liini giopt5, 

Thanne hadde he spent al his philosopliie, 645 

Ay, Questio quid juris, wolde he erye. 

He was a geutil harlot and a kynde ; 

A bettre felawe schulde men nowher fyndg. 



643. Can say Watte or Walter, as a parrot says Poll. 

644. Him grope. — " If any one knew how to try or test (his knowledge 

of Latin) in other things (than the phrases he had got by rote). 
Grope is to feel with the hands, akin to grip, grab, &c. 

646. Questio quid juris? — This kind of question occurs frequently in 

Ralph de Hengham. After having stated a case, he adds, quid 
jzcris ? and then proceeds to give the answer to it. 

647. Harlot. — Two very different derivations have been proposed for this 

word, which is used l>y our older writers without limitation to either 
sex. Morris, Kington Oliphant, and several modern dictionary 
makers, would derive it from a Welsh word herlmcd, meaning a 
young person. Much more probable seems to me the derivation 
given by the older authorities, Henshaw, Skinner, and Home 
Tooke, and approved by Kichardson and Angus, that it is simply 
horelet, a diminutive of whore (wrongly spelled with a lo, being 
itself but the same as hire, as meretrix a vierendo), and there- 
fore identical with hireling, one of either sex hired for any pur- 
pose. 

Assuming the identity of harlot with hireling, it would indicate 
first a menial or paid servant ; then a person of low birth, habits, 
or tastes; lastly a female hired for immoral purposes. In this 
sense harlootes, in Tyndal's Bible, 1534, takes the place of 
Wycliffe's hooris, 1380, in the parable of the prodigal son, Luke 
XV. 30. Hireling and mercenary have in like manner come to 
imply want of conscientiousness and selfishness in the person 
who serves for pay. 

On the class of mediaeval society variously designated as ribalds, 
harlots, and golyardeys Earle in his Philologn of the English 
Tongue, § 54, says, " One of the ways, and almost the only way, 
in which a man of low birth who had no inclination to the religious 
life of the monastery could rise into some sort of importance and 
consideration was by entering the service of some powerful baron. 
He lived in coarse abundance at the castle of his patron, and was 
ready to perform any service of whatever nature. He was a 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

He wolde sufFre for a quart of wyn 

A good felawe to ban his concubyn 650 

A twelve moneth, and excuse him atte f ulle : 

And prively a fynch eek cowde he puUe. 

And if he fond owher a good felawe, 

He wolds teclie him to have non awe 

In such caas of the archedeknes curs ; 655 

But-if a mannes soule were in his purs; 

For in his purs he scholde y-punyssched be. 

"Purs is the ercedeknes belle," quod he. 

But wel I woot he lyede right in dede ; 

Of cursyng oghte ech gulty man bim drede ; 660 

For curs wol slee right as assoillyng savetb ; 

And also ware him of a significamt. 



rollicking sort of a bravo or swashbuckler. He was his patron's 
parasite, bulldog, and tool." 

Wy cliff e translates the scurrilitas of the Vulgate by harlotrie, 
and Shakespeare in the same sense speaks of harlotry players. 

Gentil and h/nde.— That is, though a ' ' harlot " he was not a bully, 
but a genial, jovial sort of fellow. Kind has but recently acquired 
the sense of tender-hearted. It meant originally natural, as in 
the Litany, "the hindly fruits of the earth ;" and in Sir Thomas 
More's Life of King Richard III. we are told how he murdered 
his two nephews in order that he might be accounted a " kindly 
king " [!], that is, the legitimate sovereign, being in their absence 
the next in succession to the throne, the natural heir. 
648. A hettre felkme. — A jollier companion, in a somewhat disparaging 



652. Pulle a fynch (pluck a finch or pigeon) was a proverbial expression 

for cheating a novice. 

653. Oivher. — Anywhere. 

656. But-if = unless. The meaning of the passage is, he would teach 
his companions not to stand in awe of the archdeacon's curse or 
excommunication, since if he were not too much set on his money, 
he might purchase exemption. 

659-662. Chaucer himself does not look on excommunication as a joke, 
but considers that the spiritual injury inflicted by it is as real 
as the blessing conferred in absolution. 

661. Assoillyng. — Fr. assoiller, L. absolvere, absolution. 

662. Ware him. — ^Warn him, bid him beware of. Significavit. — A writ 



PROLOGUE. 93 

In daimger he hadde at liis ownS gise 

The ^oiige gurlus of the iliocise, 

And knew here counseil, and was al here reed. 665 

A gadand had he set upon his heed, 

As gret as it were for an alc^-stake ; 

A bokeler had he maad him of a cake. 

With him ther rood a gentil Pardoner 
Of Eouncival, his frend and his comper, 670 

That streyt was comen from the court ef Romg. 
Fu4 lowde he sang, Come liider, love, to me. 
This sompnour bar to him a stif burdoun, 
Was nevere trompe of half so gret a soun. 

G""his pardoner hadde heer as jehve as wex, 675 

;ut smothe it heng, as doth a strike of flex ; 

"Z)e excommunicato capiendo," which usually began " Significavit 
nobis venerabilis frater," &c. 
663. In daunger. — In his jurisdiction, or here rather in his power. See 
1. 517. 

At his omne gise. — After his own fashion. Guise is the same as 
icise in likeicise, otherwise. 

665. A I here reed. — The adviser of them all. Cf. Ger. rath, geheimrath. 

666, 667. ^-1 garland. — Probably of ivy. An ivy bush was affixed to the 

signboard (the ale-stake) of taverns, for a picture of which see 
Hotten's Book of Signboards. The proverb "Good wine needs 
no bush " means, no sign to recommend or call attention to it. 

668. A burlesque fancy in keeping with his roistering jovial character. 

670. Tyrwhitt has this note : " I can hardly think that Chaucer meant to 
bring his pardoner from Roncevaux in Navarre, and yet I cannot 
find any place of that name in England. An hospital Beataj 
Marise de Rouncyvalle, in Charing, London, is mentioned in the 
Monast. torn. ii. p. 443 ; and there was a Runceval Hall in Oxford 
(Stevens, vol. ii. p. 262). So that it was perhaps the name of 
some fraternity." 

His frend and his comper. — A sly hit at the character of the 
pardoner. 

672. Come hider, &c. — Probably the burden of some song. 

673. Sang to him or accompanied him in a deep bass. Fr, hourdon, the 

name of a deep organ-stop. 

674. There was never a trumpet of so deep a sound as the sompnour's 

voice. 
676. Strike or hank of flax, as if stroked or spread out. 



94 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

By unces hynge his lokkes that he hadd8, 

And therwith he his schuldres overspradde 

Ful thiiine it lay, by culpons on and oon, 

But hood, for joUtee, ne werede he noon, 680 

For it was trussed up in his wal^t. 

Him thought he rood al of the newe get, 

Dischevele, sauf his cappe, he rood al bare. 

Suche glaryng ey^en hadde he as an hare. 

A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe. 685 

His walet lay byforn him in his lappe, 

Bret ful of pardouns come from Rome al hoot. 

A voys he hadde as smale as eny goot. 

677. Unces. — Uncia, in Latin, is the twelfth part of anything; an ounce 
= one twelfth of a pound, an inch one-twelfth of a foot. Then 
unce in English, as itncia in Latin, was used for a small quantity. 
Here it means probably tufts. 

679. Culpons. — Shreds, bundles. Fr. coupon, from cotiper, 0. Fr. 
colper, to cut. 

682. Him thought. — The old impers., retained only in methinks; the 

pronoun is in the dative, and the meaning is, it seea.ed to him, 
not he thought. 

He rood. — He rode. 

Al of the newe get. — All in the newest fashion. 

683. Dischevele — Fr. dechevele, with the hair {cheveux, L. capilla) hanging 

loose. Sauf his cajype. — Saving or except his cap, for he wore no 
hood, as was explained in line 680. 
685. Vernicle. — A veronicle or miniature copy of the likeness of our 
Lord on a relic known as St. Veronica's handkerchief, preserved 
in St. Peter's at Rome. The legend is that she was a holy woman 
who followed our Lord to Calvary wiping the sweat from his 
brow with a napkin, on which a picture of his features afterwards 
miraculously appeared. Facsimiles or copies of relics were sold or 
given to pilgrims, who kept them as evidences of the various shrinea 
they had visited. See Piers Ploivman (ed. Skcat), A. p. 67 : — 
"A belle and a bagge he bar by his syde ; 
An hundred of anipulles on his hat seten, 
Signes of Synay, and shelles of Galice, 
And many a crouche on his cloke, and Keyes of Rome. 
And the vernicle bifore, for men sholde knowe 
And se bi hise signes, whom he sought hadde." 
687. Bret fid of pardouns = hYimivi\ of indulgences. A Norse word*. 
Sw. brciddfull, A.S. brerd, brim. 



PROLOGUE. 95 

No berd hadde he, ne never scholdtJ hav6, 

As smothe it was as it were late i-schavu; 690 

But of his craft, fro Berwyk into Ware, 

Ne was ther such another pardoner. 

For in his male he hadde a pilwebeer, 

Which that he saide, was oure lady veyl : 695 

He seide, he hadde a gobet of the seyl 

That seynt Peter hadde, whan that he wente 

Uppon the see, till Jhesu Crist him hentu. 

He hadde a croys of latoun ful of stones, 

And in a glas he hadde pigges bongs. 700 

But with thise reliques, whanne that he fond 

A poure persoun dwellyng uppon lond, 

Upon a day he gat him more moneye 

Than that the persoun gat in monthes tweye. 

And thus with feyn^d flaterie and japes, 705 

He made the pei'soun and the people his ajjes. 

But trewely to tellen atte laste, 

He was in church e a noble ecclesiaste. 

Wei cowde he rede a lessoun or a storye, 

But altherbest he sang an offertorie ; 710 

For wel he wyste, whan that song was songg, 

He moste preche, and wel affyle his tonge, 

692. Bericyh into Ware. — K this be really what Chaucer wrote it is not 
easy to understand why he did not name some town further 
south. 

69L Male. — O.Fr., malle, !Mod. Fr., a bag or large package. Cf. mail- 
coach or train. It has in English become so associated wuth the 
postal service that we use the repetition mai7-bag, as if mail 
meant letters. 
Pilwebeer. — A pillow-case. Cf. Dan. vaar, a cover. 

^96. Gohet. — Dim. of gob, a piece. 

698. /fe/if€.— Seized or took hold of. A.S. hanten. 

699. Croys of latoun. — A cross of brass. Fr. laiton, brass. 
702. Pp^soun = parson, not person. 

705. Japes. — Tricks, impostures. 

709. Storye. — From the lives of the saints or such like legends. 

712. Affyle.— Y\\q or polish. Fr. affila: 



96 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

To wynng silver, as he right wel cowdg : 
Therfore he sang ful meriely and lowde. 

Now have I told you schortly in a clause 715 

Thestat, tharray, the nombre, and eek the cause 
Why that assembled was this company e 
In Southwerk at tliis gentil ostelrie, 
That highte the Tabbard, faste by the BellS. 
But now is tyme to ?/ow for to telle • 720 

How that we bare us in that ilke night, 
Whan we were in that ostelrie alight ; 
And after wol I telle of oure viage. 
And al the remenaunt of oure pilgrimage. 

But ferst I pray yO\\ of your curtesie, 725 

That ye ne rette it nat my vileinye. 
Though that I speke al pleyn in this mature, 
To tells ;you here woixles and here cheere ; 
Ne though I speke here wordes proprely. 
For this ye knowen al so wel as I, 730 

Who so schal telle a tale after a man. 
He moot reherce, as neigh as evere he can, 
Everych a word, if it be in his charge, 
Al speke he nevere so rudely che and large; 
Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe, 735 

Or feyne thing, or fynde wordes newS. 

713. Wynne — gain. Cowde. — Knew how to. 

716. Thestat, tharray. — The estate, the array, i.e. the social position, 

and the dress, &c., of each, 
719. The Belle. — Thomas Wright says that he can find no mention of 

such an inn in that place, though Stowe speaks of one near the 

Tabard with.,the sign of the Bull. 

721. How we conducted oui'selves in that same night, A.S. ylc, Scot. ilk. 

722. Were alight = had alighted at. A.S. alihtan, to descend. 

726. Ne rette. — The Ellesm. MS. has " narrette ; " rette or arette means to 
ascribe, deem, impute. Icel. retta, to set right (from rettr — right), 
in A.S, aretan. It has no connection with arrest, Fr. arreter 
(from L. restare), which means to cause to stop, in O.E. arresten. 
The sense of this line is, " that you do not ascribe it to my ill- 
breeding or coarseness " — vileinye, as we should say vulgarity. 

728. Here cheere. — Their expression or behaviour. 

734. All. — Here as in 1. 744 = although. Large. — Same as broode, 1. 739. 



PROLOGUE. 97 

He may not spare, although he were his brother ; 
He moot as wel sey oo word as another. 
Crist spake himself fill broode in holy writ, 
And wel ye woot no vileinye is it. 740 

Eke Plato seith, who so that can him redS, 
The wordSs mot be cosyn to the dedg. 
Also I pray you to for^eve it me, 
Al have I nat set folk in here degre 
Here in this tale, as that thei schuldg stonde ; 745 

My wit is schorte, ye may wel understondg. 
Greet cheere made oure host us everichon. 
And to the souper sette he us anon ; 
And servede us with vitaille atte bestS. 
Strong was the wyn, and wel to drynke us leste. 750 
A semely man our boost he was withall§ 
For to ban been a marschal in an halle; 
A largS man was he with ey^en stepe, 
A fairer burgeys was ther noon in Chepg : 

739. Broode. — We still speak of a "broad joke," meaning one rather 
coarse or vulgar. 

741. Chaucer drew this saying of Plato from Boethius de Cons. Phil. 

lib. iii. par. 12. 

742. Cosyn. - Kindred, i.e. the words must correspond to the things 

described. 

Chaucer's purpose in writing these tales being to depict the 
manners, morals, and character of every class in the middle 
grades of society, and at the same time to expose the vices and 
hold up to ridicule the impostures of the religious orders, he felt 
himself constrained to give a plain and unvarnished description 
without reticence or disguise, although he might by so doing 
unavoidably \a.y himself open to the charge of coarseness and 
even of obscenity, 
744, 745. He has not concerned himself with questions of precedence, 
or at least has attempted only an approximate order. 

750. Wel us leste.— It pleased {lus(ed) us well to, &c. 

752. Marschal in an halle. — Steward in a college or hall. Marshal — Fr. 
marechal, from L.L. viariscalcus, and that from 0. Ger, marah, 
a horse, and scale (Mod. Ger. schaU-), an attendant, is one of those 
titles which have undergone the most diverse changes of meaning. 

751. The wealthiest burgesses or citizens of London lived in Cheapside. 

(59) G 



98 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Bold of his speche, and wys and well i-taught, 755 

And of manhede him lakkede right naught. 

Eke therto he was right a mery man, 

And after soper playen he bygan, 

And spak of myrthe amonges othre thinges, 

Whan that we hadde maad oure rekenynggs ; 760 

And say de thus ; "Lo, lordynges, trewely 

Ye ben to me right welcome hertily : 

For by my trouthe, if that I schal not lye, 

I saugh no^t this i/eer so mery a companye 

At oones in this herbergh as is now. 765 

Fayn wold I don yow mirthe, wiste I how. 

And of a mirthe I am right now bythought, 

;, To doon j/ou eese, and it schal coste nought. 

/ Ye goon to Cauntiirbury ; God 3/ou speede, 

The blisful martir quyte j/ou i/oure meede ! 770 

And wel I woot, as ye gon by the weye, 

Ye schapen yow to talen and to pleye ; 

For trewely comfort ne merthe is noon, 

To rydg by the we3^e domb as a stoon; 

And therfore wol I maken you disport, 775 

As I seyde erst, and do you som confort. 

And if yow liketh alle by oon assent 

Now for to standen at my juggement; 

761, Lordynges. — A dim. of lords. Not an uncommon term of civility, 
■when we should now say gentlemen. 

765. Hevhergh. — Inn. See line 403, and note. 

766. Fayn. — Gladly. A.^. ftegan, O.'E. faiven, to be glad. 

Don yow mirthe. — Entertain you. Don, inf. of do — do-en. 

770. Quyte you youre meede = give you your reward. Blisfid martir, see 

line 17. Med, mede, or 7rieede = reward, is akin to Ger. miethe, 
and is seen in midwife, a woman paid (for a certain duty). 
Quyte, in reqidte and acquit, and in the expression ' ' to get or 
be qtoit of," is the L. qtdetus, quiet, at rest, thence free of (all 
claims). 

771. Ye gon. — You go, pres. plural. 

772. Ye sc/iapen yow. — You will purpose or prepare yourselves. A.S. 

scapan, to create or form. Gesceap, creation. Cf. Ger. sch 
creation. To talen = to tell tales. 



PROLOGUE. 99 

And for to werken as I schal you sey§, 

To morwS, wliau t/q riden by the weyS, 780 

Now by my fader soul6 that is deed, 

But ye be merye, I wol yeve myn heed. 

Hold up youre hond without^ more spechC." 

Oure couiiseil was not longS for to sechS ; 

Us thoughts it uas iiat worth to make it wys, 785 

And graunted him withoutC more avys, 

And bad him seie liis verdite, as him lestS. 

"Lordynges," quoth he, "now herkneth for the beste; 

But taketh it not, I pray you, in disdayn ; 

This is the poynt, to speken schort and ])layn, 790 

That ech of yow to schortg with oure weie, 

In this viage, schal telle talSs tweye, 

To Caunturburi-ward, I mene it so. 

And hom-ward he schal tellen other tuo. 

Of aventitres that whilom han bifalle. 795 

And which of yow that ber(?th him best of alie, 

That is to seyn, that telleth in this caas 

Tales of best sentence and of most solas, 

782. BtU = unless, if you be not. 

Heed — head = my sense or advice, not caution, as in the phrase 
"to give or take heed," although that may be originally from the 
same word. Cf . heed in this line with hand in the next. 

782. I wol y eve. — Harl. MS. only reads s?»?/^e^/i o/. 

783. Hond, so Harl. Ellesmere, and Corpus; all others read hondes. 

784. Seche — seek. Ger. sudien. 

785. To make it toys = to make it a matter of wisdom or serious delib- 

eration. 

786. Graunted. — Assented or yielded. 

Avj/s = advice, consideration. O.Fr. advis, It. avviso, from L. 
ad, to, and video, visum, to see. 

787. Verdite. — Verdict, opinion. L. ventm dictum. 

788. 789. Herkneth, tahth. —Second pers. plu. 
791. To schorte — shorten. 

795. Whilom. — A. S. hwilum, from A.S. hwile = time. The urn or om is an 
adverbial termination or old case-ending, seen in seldo7«, and 
O.E. ferrum, from afar. Whilom means, therefore, "once on a 
time. " 

798. Sentence. — L. sententia, judgment, good sense. 



100 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

Schal han a soper at oure alther cost 

Here in this place sittynge by this post, 800 

Whan that we comen ageyn from Cautuibury. 

And for to maken ;?/ou the more mery, 

I wol myselven gladly with ?/oii ryde, 

Eight at myn owen cost, and be youre gyde. 

And who so wole my juggement vvithseie 805 

Schal paye for al we spenden by the weye. 

And if 3/e vouchesauf that it be so, 

Telle me anoon, withouten wordes moo, 

And I wole erely schape me therfore." 

This thing was graunted, and oure othes swore 810 

With ful glad herte, and prayden him also 

That he wolde vouchesauf for to doon so. 

And that he woldS ben oure governour. 

And of oure tales jugge and reportour, 

And sette a souper at a certeyn prys ; 815 

And we wolde rewled be at his devys. 

In heygli and lowe ; and thus by oon assent 

We been accorded to his juggement. 

And therupon the wyn was f et anoon ; 

We dronken, and to reste wente echoon, 820 



799. Oure alther cost = at the cost of us all. Oure and altlier are genitives 

plur. 
805. Withseie. — The prefix is not our prep, tvith, but with (of which 

wither wa.s a comparative form), the A.S. prefix meaning against, 

as in withstand, withdraxv. Cf. gainsay. 
807. Vouchesauf. — Vouchsafe, grant. O.Fr. voucher is not simply to 

vouch for or attest, but rather to cite a matter in a lawsuit, to 

call to one's aid. Vouchsafe too meant originally to promise or 

grant secure possession, and was written as two words. "The 

king vouclies it safe" (Rob. Brunne). 
810. Oure othes sicore. — We swore our oaths. 

816. Devys. — Decision, direction. 

817. In heygh and Zo?re.— Law Latin in or de alto et basso, Fr. de haut 

en has, were expressions of entire submission on one side and 

sovereignty on the other. 
819. Fet = fetched. A.S. fettan. 
S20. Echoon. — Each one. 



PROLOGUE. 101 

Withouten eny lengere taryinge. 
A morwC whan the day bigan to spryngS, 
Up roos cure host, and was our alther cok, 
And gadered us togidre alle in a flok, 
And forth we rideu a litel more than jjaas, 825 

Unto the watery nge of seint Thomas : 
And there oure host bigan his hors arestS, 
And seydS; " Lordes, herkneth if yow leste. 
Ye woot 3/oure forward, and I it ^o\i record^. 
If even-song and morwe-song acordg, 830 

Lat se now who schal telle ferst a tale. 
As evere I moote drinke wyn or ale, 
"Who so be rebel to my juggement 
Schal paye for al that by the weye is spent. 
Now uraweth cut, er that we ferrer twynne ; 835 

He which that hath the schortest schal bygynne." 
"Sire knight," quoth he, "my maister and my lord, 
Now draweth cut, for that is myn acord. 
Cometh ner," quoth he, "my lady prioressg; 
And ye, sir clerk, lat be your schamfastnesse, 840 

Ne studieth nat ; ley hand to, every man." 
Anon to drawen every wight bigan, 

822. A viorice. — On the morrow, the 18th of April. 

823. Ouve alther cok. — Cook for us all. See note on line 799. 

825. At little more than a foot or walking pace. 

826. The watering of St. Thomas was at the second milestone on the 

old Canterbury road. It is frequently mentioned by the early 
dramatists. 

827. Areste. — To pull up, bring to rest. 

829. Ye tcoot youre forimrd. — You know your promise. Foncarcl^ 
A.S. foreiceard, a covenant or agreement made beforehand. 

831. Lat se. — Let us see. 

835. Draweth cut. — Draw lots ; second pcrs. plur. Froissart says " tirer a 
longue paille," lots drawn by pulling the longest straw from a 
stack ; so cuts mean the broken lengths of the sti-aws. 

835. Ferrer, so Ellesmere and Heng., others read /erf /<er. 
Twynne. — To depart, literally to part in twain. 

840. Sir was a common appellation of clergy, at least of the secular, who 
were not Father or Brother. 

Let be your modesty or shyness. Shaviefasf, modest, is like 



102 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

And schortly for to tellen as it was, 

Were it by aventtire, or sort, or cas. 

The soth is this, the cut fil to the knight, 845 

Of which ful glad and blithe was every wight; 

And telle he moste his tale as was resoun, 

By forward and by composicioun. 

As ye han herd ; what needeth wordes moo? 

And whan this goode man seigh that it was so, 850 

As he that wys was and obedient 

To kepe his forward by his fre assent. 

He seyde; "Syn I schal bygynne the game, 

What, welcome be thou cut, a Goddes name ! 

Now lat us ryde, and herkneth what I seye." 855 

And with that word we riden forth oure weye ; 
And he bigan with right a merie chere 
His tale anon, and seide in this manere. 

steadfast^ and has been erroneotisly spelled shamefacedness in 
1 Tim. ii. 9. 
842. Wight.— ^QQ on h'ne 71. 

844. Aventure, or sort, or cas. — Sort (L. soi^s), cas (L. casus), are almost 

synonymous words, as luck and chance. 

845. Soth.— The truth. Cf. soothsayer. 

847. He must, as was reasonable. 

848. Forward.— Qee line 829. 

Composicioun. — Agreement or arrangement. This sense is still 
retained in speaking of bankruptcy : compounding or effecting a 
composition with one's creditors. 
850. Seigh = saw. The final w (as in saw) often points to a guttural 
either in A.S. or allied Teutonic languages. 

853. Sjpi.—^ince. 

Schal bears here its original meaning of moral compulsion or 
duty, as in German, where also schuld is a debt or obligation. 

854. A Goddes name. — In God's name. 



^ J 



QLOSSART. 



103 



GLOSSARY. 



A, on, in. A monce, line 822. A 
Goddes name, line 854. 

Able, fit, capable, 1G7. 

Acorde, agreement, 244, 830. 

Achate, achatour, purchase, 
purchaser, 571, 5G8. 

Adrad, in dread, G05. 

Aferd, afraid, G28. 

Affyle, to polish, 712. 

Al, altliough, 734. Al be, 297. 

Ale-Stake, sign of a tavern, G67. 

Algate, always, 571. 

Al so, as, 730. 

Alther, aller, of all (in composi- 
tion), 5SG, 710, 799, 823. 

Amblere, a nag, 469. 

A morwe, to-morrow, or in th_e 
morning, 822. 

Anlas, a dagger, 357. 

Anon, anoon, in one (instant), 32. 

Anoynt, anointed, 199. 

Ape, ape, or metaphorically a fool, 
a dupe, 706. 

Apiked, trimmed, 365. 

Areste, to stop (a horse), 827. 

Arive, disembarkation (of troops), 
60. 

Arrerage, arrears, 602. 

Arwe, arrow, 104. 

As nouthe, as now, at present, 462. 

Assoillyng, absolution, 661. 

Atte, at the, 29, 193, 651, 707, 749. 

Avaunce, to be of advantage, to 
I)roflt, 246. 

Avaunt, boast, 227. 

Aventure, luck, chance, adven- 
ture, 25, 795. 

Avys, consideration, 786. 

Ay, ever, 63. 

Bacheler, an unmarried man, 80. 
The other uses of the word are dis- 
cussed in the note. 

Bar, baar, bore, 158, 558, 618 ; con- 
ducted, 105, 721. 



Barres, ornaments of a girdle, 329. 
Bawdrik, a crossbolt, 116. 
Bede, bead (prayer), 159. 
Begg-ere, beggestere, a beggar 

(lit. one who carries a bag), 242, 252. 

{Beggestere, prop, a female beggar. ) 
Berd, beard, 270. 
Bere, to bear, carry, conduct one's 

self, 796. 
Berstles, bristles, 556. 
Besy, busy, 321. 
Bet, better, 242. 

Betwixe, betwixt, between, 277. 
Bifalle, befallen, 795. 
Bisette, to employ, use, 279. 
Blak, black, 557. 
Blankmanger, blancmange, a 

compound, minced fowl, cream, 

sugar, and flour, 387. 
Bledde, bled, 145. 
Blisful, blessed, 17, 770. 
Bokeler, bocler, buckler, 112, 471, 

668. 
Boon, bone, 546. 
Boot, boote, remedy, 424. 
Boras, borax, 630. 
Bord, joust, tournament, or table. 

See note 52. 
Born, conducted, 87 
Botes, bootes, boots, 203, 273. 
Bracer, arnmur for the arras, 111. 
Braun, muscle, 546. 
Breed, bred, bread, 147 
Breke, to break, 551. 
Brem, a bream, 350. 
Bremstoon, brimstone, 629. 
Brest, breste, breast, 115. 
Bret ful. brimful, 687. 
Breth, breethe, breath, 5. 
Bretherhede, brotherhood, 511. 
Broch, broach, 160. 
Brood, broode, brode, broad 

1.^5, 471, 549. 
Broode, broadly, plainly, 739. 
Broun, brown, 109. 



104 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 



Burdoun, a musical accompani- 
ment. 673. 

Burgeys, burgess, 369. 

Busynesse, care, anxiety, labour, 
520. 

But-if, unless, 351, 582. 

Byfel, byfll, befell, 19. 

Byfore, byforn, before, 377, 450. 

Bygan, bigan, began, 44. 

Byg-onne, begun, 52. 

Bygynne, to begin, 42. 

Bynne, bin, chest, 593. 

Byside, beside, near, 445. 

Bysmotered, besmuttered, 76. 

Byt, bids, 187. 

By thought, have called to mind, 
767. 

Byynge, buying, 569. 

Caas, cas, chance, .585, 844. 
Caas, case in law, 323. 
Cappe, cap, hood, 586. 
Carf, carved, 100. 
Carl, churl, 545. 
Carpe, to talk, 474. 
Catel, wealth, chattels, 373, 540. 
Ceruce, ceruse, white-lead, 630. 
Chapeleyn, a chaplain, 164. See n. 
Chapman, a mercliant, 397. 
Chaunge, change, 348. 
Chaunterie. See note 510. 
Cheere, appearance, manners, face, 

cheer, 139, 728. 
Chevysaunce, gain, profit, an 

agreement for borrowing money, 

282. See note. 
Chikne, chicken, 380. 
Chivachie, a military expedition, 

raid, 85. 
Chyvalrye, chivalry, exercises and 

exploits of knighthood, 45. 
elapsed, clasped, 273. 
Cleere, clearly, 170. 
Clene, cleanly, 133. 
Clennesse, cleanness, purity of 

life, 506. 
Clense, to cleanse, 631. 
Clepen, to call, 121, 643. 
Clept, called, 376. 
Clerk, a learned man, student at 

the university, 285. 



Cofre, coffer, chest, 298. 

Comper, a close companion, 670. 

Composicioun, bargain, agree- 
ment, 848. 

Confort, comfort, 776. 

Conscience, feeling, pity, 142, 150. 

Coote, cote, coat, 103, 612. 

Cop, top or tip of anything, 554. 

Cope, cape, 260. 

Corage, heart, 11 ; spirit, 22. 

Cours, course, 8. 

Courtepy, a short coat, 290. See n. 

Couthe, cowthe, cowde, could, 
236,326; knew, 467; knew how to, 
95, 106, 110. 

Covyne, deceit, fraud, 604. See n. 

Coy, quiet, 119. 

Croys, cross, 699. 

CruUe, curly, 81. 

Cryk, creek, 409. 

Culpons, shreds, bundles, 679. 

Cuntre, country, 216. 

Cuppe, cup, 134. 

Curat, one wlio has "cure of souls," 
219. See note. 

Cure, care, 303. 

Curious, careful, 577. See note. 

Curteys, courteous, 99, 250. 

Cut, lot, 835. See note. 

Daliaunce, gossip, small talk, 211. 
Daunger, position of danger, hence 

jurisdiction or power, 402. See n. 
Daungerous, domineering, 517. 
Dayerie, dairy, 597. . 
Dayesye, daisy, 332. 
Dede, deed, 742. 
Deed, dead, 145. 
Deef, deaf, 446. 
Degre, station in life, 40. 
Delite, delyt, luxury, pleasure. 

335 and note, 337. 
Delve, to dig, 536. 
Deljrver, active, nimble, 84. 
Despitous, cruel, merciless, 516 
Dethe, death, 605. 
Dette, debt, 280. 
Detteles, free from debt, 582. 
Devys, opinion, decision, 816. 
Eevyse, describe, 34. 
Deyere, dyer, 362. 



GLOSSARY. 



\0l 



Deys, table of state, 370. See note. 

Deynte, dainty, valuable, 168. 
Lit. toothsome. 

Diete, diet, 435. 

Digne, worthy, 141 ; proud, dis- 
dainful, 517. 

Dischevele, with hair hanging 
loose, G83. 

Dispence, expenditure, 441. 

Docked, cut short, 590. 

Domb, dumb, 774. 

Dome, decision, judgment, 323. 

Don, doon, to do, cause, make, 78, 
268, 768. 

Dong", dung, 530. 

Dora, door, 460. 

Dorste, durst, dare, 227. 

Doseyn, a dozen, 578. 

Dowte, doubt, fear, 487. 

Dragges, drugs, 426. See note. 

Drede, to dread, 660. 

Dresse, to set in order, 106. See n. 

Dronken, drunk, 135, 637. 

Drops, a drop, 131. 

Dyke, to make ditches, 536. See n. 

Ecclesiaste, an ecclesiastic, 708. 
Ech, eche, each, 39, 369. 
Echoon, each one, 820. 
Eek, also, 5, 41. 
Beres, ears, 556. 
Eese, pleasure (ease), 768. 
Elles, else, 375. 

Embrowded, embroidered, 89. 
Encombred, troubled, in danger, 

508. 
Endite, to dictate, 95. 
Enfecte, tainted (l>y bribery), 320. 
Entuned, intoned, 123. 
Envyned, stored with wine, 342. 
Ercedekne, archdeacon, 658. 
Eschaunge, exchange, 278. 
Esed, accommodated, entertained, 

29. 
Estat, estate, state, condition, 203, 

522. 
Estatlich,estatly,stately,140,281. 
Esy, easy, 223 ; moderate, 441. 
Everych, everich, every, 241; 

each, 371. 
Everych a, each, every, 733. 



Everychon, everichon, every- 

ouf, 31, 747. 
Eyen, eyghen, eyes, 152, 627. 

Fader, father, 100, 781 (genitive). 

Faire, neatly, gracefully, 94, 124, 273. 

Fairnesse, honesty of life, 519. 

Faldyng, coarse cloth, 391. See 
note. 

Falle, befell, 585. 

Famulier, familiar, homely, 215. 

Farsed, stuffed, 233. See note. 

Fayn, gladly, 766. 

Fedde, fed, 146. 

Felawe, fellow, companion, 650. 
See note. 

Felaweschipe, company, 32. 

Fer, far, 388, 491. Ferre,/errer, far- 
ther, 48, 835. Fen-est, farthest, 494. 

Feme, either distant or ancient, 14. 
See note. 

Ferthing, fourth part, hence a very 
small portion of anything, 134, 255. 

Festne, to fasten, 195. 

Fet, fetched, 819. 

Fetys, neat, well-made, 157. See n. 

Fetysly, neatly, properly, 124. 

Feyne, to feign, 705. 

Fil, fell, 131, 845. 

Fithel, fiddle, 296. See note. 

Flex, flax, 676. 

Floytynge, playing on a flute, 91. 

Foo, foe, 63. 

For, because, 443 ; for fear of, 276. 

Forgeve, forgive, 743. 

Forheed, forehead, 154. 

Forneys, furnace, 202. 

For-pyned, wasted away, torment- 
ed, 205. 

Forster, forester, 117. 

Forther, further, 36. 

Fortunen, to make fortunate, 417 

Forward, compact, agreement, 33, 
829. 

Fother, a load, 530. 

Foughten, fought (p. part.), 62. 

Fowle, fowel, fowl, 9, 190. 

Fredom, liberality, 46. 

Frend, friend, 299. 

Fro, from, 324. 

Fyr-reed, fiery red, 624. 



106 



The canterbury tales. 



Gader, to gather, 824. 

Gaf, gave, 177, 

Galyngale, sweet cyperus, 381. 

Gamede, pleased, 534. 

Gat, got, 703, 704. 

Gat-tothed. See note on 468. 

Gauded, ornamented, 159. 

Geldehalle, guildhall, 370. See n. 

Gentil, noble, 72. 

Gepoun, a short cassock, 75. 

Gere, gear, 352. 

Gerner, garner, 593. 

Gesse, to guess, suppose, 82, 117. 

Get, fashion, 682. 

Gete, to get, 291. 

Geve, give, 223, 225. 

Gipser, a pouch, 357. 

Gise, fashion, way, 663. 

Gobet, morsel, piece, 696. 

Golyardeys. See note on 5G0. 

Goost, ghost, spirit, 205. 

Goot, goat, 688. 

Goune, gown, 93. 

Governaunce, management of 

affairs, control, 281. 
Governynge, control, 599. 
Graunte, grant, consent to, 786. 
Greece, grease, 135. 
Gret, greet, great (comp. gretter, 

sup. gretteste), 84, 120, 137, 197. 
Greyn, grain, 596. 
Grope, to try, test, 644. 
Grys, a gray fur, 194. 
Gulty, guilty, 660. 
Gurles, young people of either sex, 

664. 
Gynglyng, jingling, 170. 

Haberdasshere, a hatter (Gas- 

coigne), 361. See note. 
Haburgeoun, a small hauberk or 

coat-of-mail, 76. See note. 
Hade, had, 554. 
Halwes, saints, 14. See note. 
Happe, to happen, befall, 585. 
Hardily, certainly, 156. 
Harlot, a young person of either 

sex, or more probably a hireling, 

647. See note. 
Harlotries, ribaldries, 561. 
Harixeysed, equipped, 114. 



Harre, a hinge, 550. 

Haue, to have, 245. 

Haunt, practice, skill, 447. 

Heed, head, 198, 455, 782. 

Heeld, held. 337. 

Heep, assembly, host, 575. 

Heer, here, hair, 555, 589. 

Heere, to hear, 169. 

Heethe, hethe, a heath, 6, 606. 

Heih, &c., high, 316. 

Heiher, upper, 399. 

Helpen of, to get rid of, 632. 

Heng-, hanged, 160, 358. 

Hente, get, take hold of, 299, 698. 

Herbergh, lodging, 403, 765. See 

note. 
Herde, a herdsman, 603. See note. 
Here, of them, their, 11, &c. Hem, 

them, 18, &c. 
Herkne, to hearken, 828. 
Herte, heart, 150. 
Hertily, heartily, 762, 
Hethen, heathen, 66. See note. 
Hethenesse, heathen lands, 49. 
Heve, to heave, I'aise, 550. 
Hider, hitlier, 672. 
Highte, was called, 616, 719 
Hipes, hips, 472. 
Hire, her, 120, &c. 
Hit, it, 345, &c. 
Holden, esteemed, held, 141. 
Holly, wholly, 599. 
Holte, wood, grove, 6. 
Holwe, liollow, 289. 
Hond, hand, 108. 
Honest, creditable, respectable, 

becoming, 246. 
Hoole, whole, 533. 
Hoona, home, 400. 
Hoomly, homely, 328. 
Hoost, host, 751. 
Hote, hotly, 97. 
Hors, horse, 74, (plur.) 598. 
Hostelrie, an inn, 23. 
Hostiler, innkeeper, 241. 
Hotte, hot, 394. 
Hous, house, 343. 
Househaldere, householder, 339. 
Hyndreste, hindmost, 622. 
Hyne, servant, hind, 603. 
Hynge, hung, 677. 



GLOSSARY. 



107 



I, a prefix denoting tlie past part, 
of verba, and represented in other 
Teutonic languages by »/, ge, &c. 

I-bore, borne, carried, 37». 

I-chaped, having chapes or plates 
of metal, 3W5. 

I-falle, fallen, 25. 

I-gO, gone, 286. 

I-knowe, known, 423. 

I-lad, led, 530. 

I-pynched, plaited, 151. 

I-schadwed, shaded, 007. 

I-SChave, shaven, 690, 

I-SChorn, shorn, 589. 

I-schreve, shriven, 226. 

I-Stored, stored, 609. 

I-taught, 127. 

I-proved, 485. 

I- write, 161. 

See also Y. 

like, same, 64, 175. 

Inne, in, 41. 

Inough, enough, 373. 

Jangler, a prater, babbler, 560. 
Jape, trick, jest, 705. 
Jolitee, joy, 680. 
Jug-ge, judge, 814. 
Juste, to joust or tilt, in tour- 
nament, 96. 

Keep, kepe, care, attention, heed, 

398, 503. 
Kene, keen, sharp, 104. 
Kept, guarded, taken care of, 276. 
Keverchef, kerchief, 453. 
Knarre, a thick-set fellow, 549. 
Knobbe, a pimple, 633. 
Kouthe, known, renowned, 14. 
Kynde, natural, genial, 647. 

Lafte, left (past, sing.), 492. 

Large, free, 734. 

Lat, imperative of let, cease, 188. 

Late, lately, recently. 77, 690. 

Lazer, lazar, a leper, 242, 245. 

Leed, a cauldron, 202. 

Leet, let, 128, 508. 

Lene, lean, poor, 287, 591. 

Lenger, lengere, longer, 330, 821. 

Leme, to learn, 308. 

Lieste, pleasure, 132. 



Letuaries, electuaries, 426. See n. 

Lewed, ignorant, lay, 502. See note. 

Ley, to lay, 81, 841. 

Licenciat. See note 220. 

Licour, liciuor, 3. 

Lipsede, lisped, 264. 

List, Leste, it please, vb. irapers., 
583, 750. 

Litarge, litharge, 629. See note. 

Lite, little, humble. 494. 

Lodemenage, pilotage, 403. See n. 

Lokkes, lucks of hair, 81. 

Lond, londe, land, 14, 194, 702. 

Longen, to desire, long for, 12. 

Lore,doctrine,precepts,learning,527 

Loth, unwilling, 486. 

Luce, a pike fish, 350. 

Lust, pleasure, 192. 

Lust, pleased, 102. 

Lusty, pleasant, merry, 80. 

Lyf, life, 71. 

Lyk, like, alike, 590. 

Lymytour. See note 209. 

Lystes, place of encounter at tour- 
naments, 63. See note. 

Lyvere. See note 363. 

Maad, made, 394, 668. 
Maister,maystre,master, 261 , 576. 
Maistrie, power, superiority, 165. 
Male, a bag, 694. See note. 
Maner, naanere, manner, kind, 

sort of, 71, 858. 
Manhede, manliness, 756. 
Many oon, many a one, 317. 
Marschal, marshal, 752. See note. 
Mary, marrow, 380. 
Matere, matter, 727. 
Maunciple, caterer of a college,544. 
Mede, a meadow, 89. 
Mede, meed, naeede, Ac, reward, 

770. 
Medl^, of a mixed colour, medley, 

3-28. 

Meke, meek, 69. 
Mellere, miller, 542. 
Men, one (as "one calls it"), 149. 
Mene, to mean, intend, 793. 
Mere, mare, 541. 

Merie, mery, merye, &c. , merry, 
pleasant, 208, 757. 



108 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 



Meriely, pleasantly, 714. 
Merthe, mirthe, pleasure, 

amusement 766, 767, 773. 
Mescheef, meschief, misfortune, 

493. 
Mester, trade, occupation, 613. 
Mesurable, moderate, 435. 
Mete, food, 136. See note. 
Mewe, coop for fattening fowls, 349. 
Mo, moo, more, 544. 
Moche, mochil, much, great, 

greatly, 132, 258, 467. 
Mone, moone, moon, 403. 
Moneth, month, 92. 
Moot, mot, must, may, ought, 232, 

735, 742. 
Mormal, an ulcer, 386. See note. 
Mortreux, a kind of soup, 384. 

See note. 
Morwe, morning, morrow, 334, 780. 
Moste, must, 712. 
Motteleye, motley, 271. 

Nacioun, nation, 53. 

Nar'we, narrow, 625. 

Nas, ne was, was not, 251. 

Nat, not, 366, &c. 

Natheles, nevertheless, 35. 

Ne, not, 70, &c. Ne..., but, only, 120. 

Neede, needful, 304. 

Neet, neat (cattle), 597. 

Neigh, near, S88. 

Nekke, neck, 238. 

Ner, nearer, 839. 

Ne"we, newly, recently, 365. 

Nightertale, night time, 97. 

Nogt, not, 253, &c. 

Nolde, ne wolde, would not, 550, &c. 

Nombre, number, 716. 

Nomoo, no more, 101. 

Non, noon, none, 178, &c. 

Nones, nonce, 379, 523. 

Nonne, nun, 118. 

Noot, not.ne wot, know not, 284, &c. 

Noote, a musical note, 235. 

Nose-thurles, nostrils, 557. See n. 

Not-lieed,aroundcropped head, 109. 

Nougt, not, 107. 

Nouthe, just now, 462. 

Ofifertorie, the sentences of Scrip- 



ture read during the offertory in 

the church, 710. 
Oflfryng, the alms collected at the 

offertory, 450. 
Ofte sithes, often times, 485. 
Oghte, ought, 660. 
On, OO, oon, one, 148, 253, 304, 738. 
On and oon, one by one, 679. 
Ony, any, 552. 
Oones, once, 765. 
Or, ere, before, 36. 
Ostelrie, an inn, 722. 
Oth, oath, 810. 
Over-al, everywhere, 216. 
Overeste, uppermost, 290. 
Overlippe, upper lip, 133. 
Overspradde, overspread, 678. 
Owher, anywhere, 653. 
Oynement, ointment, 631. 
Oynouns, onions, 634. 

Paas, pas, a foot pace, 825. 
Pace, to pass on, 36 ; surpass, 574 
Pacient, a patient, 484. 
Palfray,a roadster horse,207. See n. 
Parde, pardee, par dieu (an oath), 

563. 
Pardoner, a seller of indulgences, 

543. 
Parftgt, perfect, 422, 532. 
Parischen, parishioner, 482. 
Partrich, partridge, 349. 
Parvys. See note on 310. 
Passe, to surpass, 448. 
Peire, pair, 159. 
Perce, pierce, 2. 
Perflgt, perfyt, perfect, 72, 338. 
Pers, a pale blue, 439. 
Persoun, parson, parish priest, 478. 
Peyne, peynen, to take pains, 

endeavour, 139. 
Piked. See Apiked. 
Piled, bald, 627. 
Pilwebeer, a pillow-case, 694. 
Pitaunce. See note on 224. 
Pitous, compassionate, 143. 
PlayTi, plain, 790. 
Plentyuous, plentiful, 344. 
Plese, to please, 610. 
Pleye, pleyen, to play or enjoy 

one's self, 236, 772. 



GLOSSARY. 



109 



Ple3m, plain, full, 315, 327 

Pocok, peacock, 104. 

Pomely, dappled, 616. 

Poraille, the poor, 247. 

Port, carriage, behavour, 69. 

Post, pillar, support, 214. 

Poure, pore, poor, 225, 478. 

Poudre marchaunt, a mixture 
of spices, 3S1. 

Powre, to pore over, 185. 

Poynaunt, pungent, 352. 

Practisour, practitioner, 422. 

Preche, to preach, 481 

Preve, to put to proof, 547. 

Pricasour, a hard rider, 189. 

Prike, to excite, spur on, 11. 

Prikyng-, riding, 191. 

Pris, prys, prize, 237; price, 815; 
estimation, 67. 

Prively, secretly, 652. 

Propre, peculiar, own, 581. 

Pulle, to pluck, 652. See note. 

Pulled, moulting, 177. 

Pultrie, poultry, 598. 

Purchas, anything acquired (hon- 
estly or not), proceeds of begging, 
256. 

Purchasour, prosecutor, 318. 

Purchasyng', prosecution, 320. 

Purflled, embroidered, fringed, 193. 
See note. 

Purs, purse, 656. 

Purtray, portray, draw, 96. 

Pynche, find fault with, 326. 

Quyte, free, 770. 

Raughte, reached, 136. 
Reccheles, reckless, careless, 179. 
Recorde, remind, 829. 
Rede, reed, line of conduct, 665 

(literally counsel). 
Rede, to read, 709. 
Redy, ready, 21, 3.52. 
Reed, reede, red, 90. 153, 458. 
Reeve, steward, bailiff, 542, 599. 

See note. 
Reherce, to rehearse, 732. 
Rekenynge, reckoning, 600. 
Rekne, reckon, 401. 
Remenaunt, remnant, 724. 



Rennyng', running, 551. 

Rente, income, profits, 373. 

Repentaunt, penitent, 228. 

Reportour, reporter, 814. 

Resons. reasons, opinions, 274. 

Rette, ascribe, impute, 726. 

Reule, rule, 173. 

Reverence, respect, 141. 

Rewle, to rule, 816. 

Reyn, reyne, to rain, 492, 595. 

Reyse, to n)ake a military expe- 
dition, 54. 

Rially, riallyche, royally, 378. 

Riden, to ride, 780, 825. 

Rood, rode, 169, &c. 

ROOS, rose, 823. 

Roost, a roast, 206. 

Roote, rote, 327. See note on 236. 

Roste, to roast, 147, 383. 

Rote, a guitar, or some stringed 
instrument, 236. 

Roiincy, a hack horse, 390. 

Route, a company, 622. 

Rudelyche, rudely, 734. 

Sangwyn, blood-red colour, 333. 
Sauce, saucer, deep plate, 129. 
Sauf, save, except, 683. 
Saugh, saw, 193, 764. 
Sa"wceflem, pimpled, 025. See n. 
Sawtrie, a psaltery or harp, 296. 
Sayn, to say, 284. 
Scarsly, sparingly, 583. 
Schamfastnesse, modesty, 840. 
Schape, to plan, purpose, 772, 809. 
Schaply, fit, likely, 372. 
Schave, shaven, 588. 
Scheeldes, crowns (a coin), 278. 
Schene, bright, fair, 115. 
Schipman, a seaman, sailor, 388. 
Schire, shire, county, 15. 
Schirreve, sheriff, or governor of a 

shire, 359. 
Scholde, schulde, should, 249, 

506, &c. 

Schon, shone, 198. 

Schoo, shoe, 253. 

Schorte, to shorten, 791. 

Schuldre, shoulder, 678. 

Schuldred, having (such) shoul- 
ders, 549. 



110 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 



Schyne, shin, leg, 386. 

Scole, school, 125. 

Scoler, scholar, 260. 

Scoley.to attend school, study, 320. 

Seche, seeke, to seek, 17, 784, Ac. 

Seek, seeke, aick, 18. 

Seide, said, 183, &c. 

Seie, seye, to say, 787. 

Seigh, saw, 850. 

Seine, saint, 173. 

Seith, saith, 178. 

Selle, to give, sell, 278. 

Selle, a cell or house, 172. See note 

Semely,seemly,elegant,123,13G,75I. 

Sen, sene, seen, seene, to see or 
be seen, 134, &c. 

Sendal, a thin silk, 440. See note. 

Sentence, sense, meaning, judg- 
ment, 306, 798. 

Servysable, willing to be of 
service, 99. 

Sesoun, seasoii, 19. 

Sethe, to boil, 383. 

Sey, seye, seyn, tosay, 181,468,738. 

Seyl, sail, 696. 

Seynt, seynte, saint, 173, 697. 

Seynt, a girdle, 329, 

Shef, sheaf, 104. 

Sik, sick, 245. 

Sikerly, surely, certainly, 137. 

Sitli, sithe, sithes, time, times, 485. 

Skalled, scabby, 627. 

Skathe, loss, misfortune, 446. See n. 

Sklendre, slender, slim, 587. 

Slee, sleen, slen, to slay, 661. 

Sleight, contrivance, craft, 604. 

Slepen, to sleep, 10. 

Sieves, sleeves, 193. 

Smal, smale, small, 9, 146, 153. 

Smerte, smartly, 149. 

Smerte, to paui, displease, hurt, 
230, 53 i. 

Smot, smoot, smote, 149. 

Smothe, smooth, smoothly, 676. 

Snewed, abounded(lit. snowed)345. 

Snybbe, to snub, reprove, 523. 

Soberly, sad, solemn, 289. 

Solas, solaas, mirth, 798. 

Solempne, festive, 209; important, 
364. See note. 

Solempnely, pompously, 274. 



Som, some, 640, &c. 

Somdel, somewhat, 174. 

Somer, summer, 394. 

Sompnour, apparitor, 543. See a 

Sondry, sundry, 14. 

Sone, son, 79. 

Songe, sung, 711. 

Sonne, the sun, 7. 

Soo, so, 102. 

Soper, supper, 348. 

Sore, sorely, 230. 

Soth, sothe, sooth, true, truly, 

845, &c. 
Sothly, truly, 117, 468. 
Soun, a sound, 674. 
Souper, supper, 748. 
Souple, supple, 203. 
Sovereyn, supreme, high,67. See n. 
Sowne, to sound, 275, 565. 
Sownynge in, tending to, 307. 
Spak, spake, 124. 
Spare, abstain, or refrain from, 192, 

737. 
Spar-we, sparrow, 626. 
Special, in special, specially, 444. 
Speede, to speed, succeed, 769. 
Speken, to speak, 142. 
Spiced, over-scrupulous, 526. 
Spores, spurs, 473. 
Squyer, squire, 79. 
Stele, to steal, 562. 
Stemede, shone, 202. 
Stepe, steep, bright, glaring, 201- 
Sterre, star, 268. 
Stewe, a fish-pond, 350. 
Stiward, steward, 579. See note. 
Stonde, stonden, to stand, 88, 745. 
Stoon, stone, 774. 
Stoor, store, farm stock, 598. 
Stot, a stallion, 615. 
Straunge, f oreign,13. See note 464. 
Streem, stream, river, 464. 
Streyt, close, strict, 174. 
Streyte, closely, 457. 
Strike, a hank (of flax), 676. 
Strond, stronde, strand, shore, la 
SufBsance, sufficiency, 490. 
Surcote, overcoat, 617. 
Swerd, sword, 112. 
Swere, to swear, 454. 
Swet, swete, sweet, 5, 266, 



GLOSSARY. 



Ill 



Swlch, such, 3, &c. 
Swinke, swynke, to labour, 186. 
'i SwOOte, sweet, 1. 
Swyn, swine, 598. 
Swynk, labour, 188, 540. 
S'wsmkere, labourer, 531. 
Syke, sick, 424. 
Syn, since, 601, 853. 

Tabard, a sleeveless frock, 541, See 
note. 

Taflfata, taffeta, 440. 

Taille, a tally, 570. See note. 

Takel, an arrow, literally any imple- 
ment, 106. See note. 

Talen, to tell tales, 772. 

Tapicer, an upholsterer, 362. See n. 

Tappestere, a barmaid, 241. 
I Targ-e, a target or shield, 471. 
■ Techen, to teach, 308. 

Thanne, then, 12. 
I Tharray, the array, 716. 

Thei, tliey, 745, &c. 
, Thencres, the increase, 275. 

Ther, there, where, 34, 43. 

Ther as, where that, 172. 

Therto, besides, 153, 757. 

Thestat, the estate or rank, 716. 

Thilke, the Uke, that, 182, &c. 

Thinke, thjnike, to seem, vb. 
impers., me thinketh, 37, it 
thoughte me, 385, him thought, 
682, us thoughte, 785. 

Thise, these (pi.), 701. 

ThO, those, 498, &c. 

Thombe, thumb, 563. 

Thonder, thunder, 492. 

Thresshe, to thrash, 536. 

Thries, thrice, 63, 562. 

To, at, 30. 

ToUen, to take toll or payment, 562. 

Tonge, tongue, 712. 

Top, head, 590. 

Toun, town, 478. 

Tretys, long and well proportioned, 
152. See note. 

Trewe, trewely, true, truly, 481, 
531, 707. 

Trompe, a trumpet, 674. 

Tiouthe, truth, 46, 763. 

Trowe, to believe, 155, 524. 



Trussed up, packed up, 681. 

Tukked,coatcd,clothed,621. See n. 

Tunge, tongue, 265. 

Tuo, two, 639. 

Tweye, itc, two, twain, 704, 792, &c. 

T-wynne, to depart, separate, 836. 

Typet, tippet, 233. 

Unce, a small portion, 677. 
UndergTOwe, undergrown, 156. 
Undertake, to affirm, 288. 
Unknowe, unknown, 126. 

Vavasour. See note on 360. 
Venerye, hunting, 166. See note. 
Verdite, verdict, sentence, 787. 
Vernicle. See note on 685. 
Verray, verrey, verraily, true 

truly, very, 72, 338, 422. 
Viag-e, travels, 77, 723. 
Vigilies, vigils, 377. 
Vileinye, unbecoming conduct, 

disgrace, 70, 726. 
Vitaille, victuals, 569, 749. 
Vouchesauf, vouchsafe, grant, 

807, 812. 

Walet, wallet, 681, 686. 
Wantoun, wanton, 208. See note. 
Wantounesse, wantonness, 264. 
War, waar, wary, cautious, 309; 

aware, 157. 
"Ware, to warn, 662. 
Wastel breed, cake, 147. See n. 
Waterles, out of the water, 180. 
Wayte, to be on the look-out for, 

525, 571. 
Webbe, weaver, 362. 
Wende, wenden, to go, 16, 21. 
Wepe, wepen, to weep, 230. 
Wered, wore, 75, 564. 
Werre, war, 47. 
Werte, wart, 555. 
"Wette, wetted, 129. 
Wex, wax, 67.5. 
Wey, weye, way, 34, 467. 
Whan, whanne, when, 5, 18, 179. 
What, as an interjection, 854. 
What, wliy, wherefore, 184. 
Whelkes, blotches, 632. 
Whil, whiles, whilst, 36, 397. 



112 



THE CANTERBURY TALES. 



Whit, white, 238. 

Widewe, widow, 253. 

Wight, a person male or female, 71, 
326. 

Wit, understanding, wisdom, 279, 746. 

Withholde, maintained, 511. 

Withouten, without, 538; besides, 
461. 

Withseie, to gainsay, 805. 

Woo, woeful, sorrowful, 351. 

Wol, wole, will, 42 ; pi. wolden, 27. 

Wolde. would, 548, &c. 

Wonder, wondurly, wonder- 
fully, 84, 483. 

Wone, custom, usage, 335. 

Wone, to dwell, 388. 

Wonyng, dwelling, 606. 

Wonne, won, conquered, 51. 

Wood, wode, mad, 184, 582. 

Woot (1st pers.), know, 389, 659. 

Worthinesse, bravery, 50. 

Worthy, worthi, brave, 47, 459. 

Wrastlynge, wrestling, 548. 

Wrighte, carpenter (literally a 
workman), 614. See note. 



Wyd, wide, 491. 

Wjrf, wif, woman, wife, 284, 446. 
Wympel, neck handkerchief, 151. 
Wyn, wine, 334. 

Wynnynges, gains, profits, 275. 
Wys, wis, wise, 68, 309, 569. 

Y, a prefix of past participles, another 

form of i (which see). 
Y-cleped, called, 410. 
Y-come, come, 77. 
Y-drawe, drawn, 396. 
Y-sene, to be seen, 592. 
Y-teyed, tied, 457. 
Y-wympled, having a wimpel 

See note 151. 
Y-"WTOught, wrought, 196. 
Yeddynges, songs, 237. 
Yeeldyng, return, produce, 696. 
Yeer, year, years, 82, 347, 601. 
Yeman, yeoman, 101. See note. 
Yerde, rod, 149. 
Yit, yet, 70. 

Yong, yonge, young, 7^ 79^ 21S 
Yow, you, 34, 38, &c 



THE END. 



English cl 

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Each Volume contains a Sketch o, , _.^^, xr^aro^ ond 

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28 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 

29 Milton's Comus. 

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totus Eaters, Ulysses, and 
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32 Dickens's Christmas Carol. 

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33 Carlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 

34 Macaulay's Warren Hastings. 

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35 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 

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36 Tennyson's The Two Voices, 

and a Dream of Fair Women. 
3 7 Memory Quotations. 

38 Cavalier Poets. 

39 Dryden's Alexander's Feast, 

and MacFlecknoe. 

40 Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes. 

41 Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hoi- 

l0T7. 

42 lamb's Tales from Shake- 

speare. 

43 liC Row's How to Teach Bead- 

ing. 

44 Webster's Bunker Hill Ora- 

tions. 

45 The Academy OrthoSpist. A 

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46 Milton's liycidas, and Hjrmn 

on the Nativity. , 

47 Bryant's Thanatopsis, and other 

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48 Buskin's Modem Painters. 

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50 Thackeray's Roundabout Pa- 

pers. 

51 Webster's Oration on Adams 

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52 Brown's Rab and His Friends. 

53 Morris's Life and Death of 

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54 Burke's Speech on American 

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55 Pope's Rape of the liOok* 

56 Tennyson's Elaine. 

57 Tennyson's In Memoriam. 

58 Church's Story of the ^neid. 

59 Church's Story of the Iliad. 

60 Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to 

Lilliput. 

61 Macaulay's Essay on Lord Ba- 

con, (Condensed.) 

62 The Alcestis of Euripides. Eng- 

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